Editorial

Following the national and international news these days leaves one with the distinct impression that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death - have been unleashed upon the world. And, certainly, in the United States, and we suspect all around the globe, both in urban and rural environments, there is a palpable hum of ongoing and growing anxiety concerning the major current challenges of global climate change and terrorism, and the implications these dual threats have for international peace and security.

Manifestations of global climate change surround us - whether in the warnings of climate scientists that 2015 was the hottest year on record and the polar ice caps continue to be at risk, or in our awareness of droughts stretching from California to sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Australia, as does flooding from Miami to China, and torrential rains and severe storms from the southeastern United States to the island of Fiji, which recently experienced the strongest storm ever recorded in the South Pacific with winds clocked at 177 m.p.h.

Scientists are further warning us that epidemics such as that of the Zika virus, with its tragic consequence of producing babies with microcephaly from virus infected mothers, and dengue, which is sickening 100 million people a year and killing in excess of 20,000 people per year worldwide, are transmitted by heat loving mosquitoes and “over the coming decades, global warming is likely to increase the range and speed of the life cycle of the particular mosquitoes carrying these viruses, encouraging their spread into temperate countries like the United States” (Gillis, 2016: 6 & 9).

Furthermore, “the physical dangers associated with climate change - extreme weather, severe drought, the warming of the oceans, rain forest destruction and disruptions of the food supply” (Chan, 2015: 18) that are most frequently emphasized in discussions of global climate change, tend to obscure the role of global warming in