The western world's leading climatologists have confirmed recent reports of a detrimental global climatic change. The stability of most nations is based upon a dependable source of food, but this stability will not be possible under the new climatic era. A forecast by the University of Wisconsin projects that the earth's climate is return*ing to that of the neo-boreal era (1600-1850)-an era of drought, famine, and political unrest in the western world.
A responsibility of the Intelligence Community is to assess a nation's capability and stability under varying internal or external pressures. The assessments normally include an analysis of the country's social, economic, political, and military sectors. The implied economic and political intelligence issues resulting from climatic change range far beyond the traditional concept of intelligence. The analysis of these issues is based upon two key questions:
What knowledge and understanding is available about world food production and can the consequences of a large climatic change be assessed?
Climate has not been a prime consideration of intelligence analysis because, until recently, it has not caused any significant perturbations to the status of major nations. This is so because during 50 of the last 60 years the Earth has, on the average, enjoyed the best agricultural climate since the eleventh century. An early twentieth century world food surplus hindered U.S. efforts to maintain and equalize farm production and incomes. Climate and its affect on world food production was considered to be only a minor factor not worth consideration in the complicated equation of country assessment. Food production, to meet the growing demands of a geometrically expanding world population, was always considered to be a question of matching technology and science to the problem.
The world is returning to the type of climate which has existed over the last 400 years. That is, the abnormal climate of agricultural-optimum is being replaced by a normal climate of the neo-boreal era.
The climate change began in 1960, but no one including the climatologists recognized it. Crop failures in the Soviet Union and India during the first part of the sixties were attributed to the natural fluctuation of the weather. India was supported by massive U.S. grain shipments that fed over 100 million people. To eat, the Soviets slaughtered their livestock, and Premier Nikita Khrushchev was quietly deposed.
Populations and the cost per hectare for technological investment grew exponentially. The world quietly ignored the warning provided by the 1964 crop failure and raced to keep ahead of a growing world population through massive investments in energy, technology, and biology. During the remainder of the 1960s, the climate change remained hidden in those back washes of the world where death through starvation and disease were already a common occurrence. The six West African countries south of the Sahara, known as the Sahel, including Mauretania, Senegal, Mali, Upper Volta, Niger, and Chad, became the first victims of the climate change. The failure of the African monsoon beginning in 1968 has driven these countries to the edge of economic and political ruin. They are now effectively wards of the United Nations and depend upon the United States for a majority of their food supply.
USSR reorganized their climatic forecasting groups and replaced the head of the Hydrometeorological Service.
Japan is planning to launch a major earth synchronous (U.S. manufactured) meterological satellite and has secured complete collection, processing, and analysis systems from the U.S.
China has made major purchases of meteorological collection and analysis equipment from western industrial sources.
India is studying the application of climatic modification to secure a more homogeneous distribution of moisture from an erratic drought/flood monsoon.
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences is preparing its recommendation for a
National Climatic Research Program.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) have developed a National Climate Plan which
will be presented to the Office of Mangement and Budget (OMB) for funding in
FY 76.
Climate is now a critical factor. The politics of food will become the central issue of every government. On July 19, 1974, the Kiev Domestic Service reported massive rains and quoted an old proverb from Lvov Oblast, "The rains come not on the day for which we pray but only when we are making hay." The climate of the neo-boreal time period has arrived.