Funk's book sounds very similar in content to another book that I have read by Christian Parenti, called: Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Georgraphy of Violence. In it, he makes a very interesting statement. "Between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer lies what I call the Tropic of Chaos, a belt of economically and politically battered post-colonial states girding the planet's mid-latitudes. In this band. around the tropics, climate change is beginning [and has begun already] to hit hard." Countries such as Kenya, Afghanistan, Brazil, India, Pakistan, and Mexico all fall into this "invisible belt" Parenti talks about, and all suffer from what he calls the "catastrophic convergence," a theory that combines three key principles and exacerbates climate change.
- Violence: Often hierarchical from wealthy to poor, with corrupt politics and politicians who are funded from questionable sources and fueled by fear, greed and hate.
- Poverty: The poor keep getting poorer, the rich keep getting richer, and there's a blatantly obvious wealth gap within the society.
- Climate change: The issue itself, as a catastrophic event that affects us all.
Let's take a closer look at some of those countries I mentioned earlier. In Kenya, and other north African countries proxy wars/ arms trading is huge because of dwindling water resources and the need to move cattle to those water resources. This causes failed states and what's ultimately to blame, climate change. In Afghanistan, farmers grow poppy because water is scarce and is drought-resistant in order to make opium, which they then sell to gangs to protect their land which they usually own as well, and then take the money they make selling the opium and pay off their debtors. It's a never -ending vicious cycle with no way out except for bullet in the skull, and once again climate change is the catalyst that made it all happen. As one final example, in Brazil there's a movement gaining a lot of popularity calld the Landless Peasants Movement, which seize/ occupy unused farm land owned by wealthier farmers and land-owners and cultivate crops for themselves in secrecy, as they have been kicked off of their land due to those same wealthier farmers or land owners and therefore have no livelihood. Each one of these examples is a snowball effect with climate change/ global warming being the piece of snow that get's the ball rolling.
It's interesting to see the similarities between the two books. If you're at all interested in learning more on this subject, I would highly recommend both WINDFALL and Tropic of Chaos. It will be interesting to see how well received WINDFALL is in the coming months.
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