Tropic of Chaos_ Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence - Christian Parenti [118]
Deepest thanks to Betsy Reed, my editor at The Nation for her patience, diligence, clarity, and friendship. Josh W. Mason also gave me a much needed, very helpful edit. Thanks to Carl Bromley of Nation books, Taya Kitman, and Katrina vanden Heuvel for all their hard work at the Nation Institute and The Nation magazine. For careful copyediting, thanks to Jen Kelland. Marissa Colón-Margolies and Chantal Flores helped with some key research and fact checking. And thanks to all the good people at Perseus Books, like John Sherer, with whom it is a pleasure to work again. Thanks also to David Callahan and Lew Daily at Demos for offering to support the promotion of this book.
Some of the travels that appear in or inform this work happened variously in the company of Ian Olds, Ryan Grim, Jessica Dimmock, Christopher Anderson, and Teru Kuwayama. In traveling for this book I worked with Casper Waithaka, Ananthkumar Chintalapalli, Michel Mbula, Tshibasu Dieudonné, Pedro Stillner, Julian Cardona, my friend Lina Britto, and my very close friend Naqeeb Sherzad. I also worked with Ajmal Nakshbandi. Ajmal was murdered by the Taliban in 2007. He is missed and his death is still a bitter lesson.
Tala Hadid, Rob Eshelman, and Forrest Hylton were essential intellectual comrades in this process. Sadia Abbas assisted with important good ideas. In India I was the guest of the inspiring and gracious Biju Mathews. Chris Cook, John Marshall, Tina Gerhardt, Jeff Burt, and Sara Kazemi; Ted Hamm, Bill Cole, Chris Reilly, Jeremy Freeman, Jan Chelminski, and Jay Stewart; Ed and Sekeena Gavagan; and Eyal Press were all good comrades.
Very importantly, Doug Henwood and Liza Featherstone fed me, informed me, shared ideas, and indulged my late-night excesses. On occasions Adolph Reed was there to make it all better. Last but not least, deep appreciation goes to Rebecca Lossin, who gave me support, comfort, company, and love.
I am lucky to say there are many other excellent friends, old and new, who were kind to me during this project and I feel deep appreciation for all of them. The more I travel, read, and learn, the more I value friendships. I see in friendship the rudimentary components—generosity, loyalty, solidarity, patience—that are the building blocks of a better society.
Christian Parenti
Brooklyn, New York
NOTES
Chapter 1
1 On Africa the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change writes, “Warming is very likely to be larger than the global annual mean warming throughout the continent and in all seasons, with drier subtropical regions warming more than the moister tropics. Annual rainfall is likely to decrease in much of Mediterranean Africa and the northern Sahara, with a greater likelihood of decreasing rainfall as the Mediterranean coast is approached. Rainfall in southern Africa is likely to decrease in much of the winter rainfall region and western margins. There is likely to be an increase in annual mean rainfall in East Africa. It is unclear how rainfall in the Sahel, the Guinean Coast and the southern Sahara will evolve.” Susan Solomon, Dahe Qin, Martin Manning, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis: Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 850.
2 James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save