The author’s first encounter with this trend was in 2006 when he was reporting on the poppy economy in Afghanistan. He came to understand that farmers of the Nangarhar Province were electing to grow the outlawed flower plant in a direct response to the severe droughts that have parched arable land across Central Asia in recent years. Poppy, he notes in the book, is a crop that thrives where staple plants do not, using one-sixth the amount of water, for instance, that wheat requires. Such resistance to drought makes it an attractive choice for farmers, but for the fact that it officially remains illegal and is a target of the American-led NATO forces attempting to stabilize the country. So it follows in Parenti’s version of the story that much of the support behind the Taliban (and therefore much of the current conflict in Afghanistan) is rooted primarily in behavior tied to climate, rather than in the ethnic and religious factors that most analysts consider.
     That evaluation isn’t usually given much airtime but does makes a fair amount of sense, considering the analyses coming from various official places. Warnings of depleted resources in the Global South constituted an important part of the most recent assessment by the UN’s panel on climate change. The authors of that report forecasted a decrease in crop yields for countries located along lower latitudes; They also wrote of food security risks in Latin America and water shortages that could affect a billion people across Asia. As for how these problems might give rise to a more volatile world, we have the clear words of the Pentagon. In its February 2010 review, the Defense Department stated, “Climate Change and energy are two key issues that will play a significant role in shaping the future security environment.” Such language from the military lends some persuasion to the case that Parenti is making.