As I offhandedly mentioned yesterday, my biggest problem with the claim that global warming is a contributing factor to Egypt's uprising isn't that it's parasitically opportunistic. It's that it undermines serious, legitimate debate on the linkages between climate change, demographics, environmental degradation, poverty, and sociopolitical factors, such as built-up frustration over government repression. And that larger, more nuanced debate, as it relates to Tunisia and Egypt, is on smart display in this thoughtful essay by Vicken Cheterian. (I'd like to see environmental security scholars step up to the plate and offer some additional analysis.) Sorting out which underlying causes are most responsible is not easy, writes Cheterian:
The problem is a lack of hard understanding. Research on the linkages between environment degradation, resource depletion and political systems is new. For example, it is not clear whether there is a relation between Arab demographic growth, new urban environments, the emergence of marginalised but educated youth, and the rise of specific types of Islamic militancy.
