Along with rising sea levels and global insecurity, climate change is producing yet another unforeseen consequence—rising violence, from road rage to civil war, a new report finds.
A working paper released Thursday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which conducted a meta-analysis of 55 separate reports on global warming and conflict in a variety of settings, found that “deviations from moderate temperatures and precipitation patterns systematically increase the risk of conflict, often substantially, with average effects that are highly statistically significant.”
The paper looked at a vast range of violence perpetrated by both individuals and groups. The studies reviewed instances of road rage, domestic abuse, assault, rape, and murder alongside geopolitical conflicts like “riots, ethnic violence, land invasions, gang violence, civil war and other forms of political instability, such as coups.”
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The researchers measured the records of violence against climate variables such as rainfall, drought, and temperature increases.
One standard deviation towards warmer temperatures increased the frequency of intergroup conflict by more than 11 percent.
Stanford researcher Marshall Burke, one of the paper’s authors, explained to the Washington Post that “for a degree Celsius of temperature increase (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit)… there could be a 20 percent increase in civil conflict in Africa.”
The Post continues:
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