Is the world becoming cataclysmically insecure (and not just self-esteem issues)?

How do educators negotiate a landscape of globalization, an unfurling Sixth Mass Extinction, an Easter Island-scenario for civilization, on top of global warming … and then instill confidence in students to carry on into the future without doing themselves in on their 30th birthdays? “It’s the only time this youth have, and it’s their future and ours in their hands, so why not tackle big propositions tied to global security. They could be living in 1400 and face death by Black Plague or abscessed tooth.” Something someone like Studs Terkel might say. Global security is not just the nuclear annihilation “thing,” though that has re-reared its ugly head as another worry (see the film, “Countdown to Zero” for that fun narrative). Global security is about human populations in transition, in trouble. Topics like disease vectors supercharging in mega-cities of over 20 million people titillate today’s college scholar. What do the experts say about the disenfranchised, disenchanted and discounted youth? Planners and researchers in the global security game say that high youth unemployment – especially for men – and a growing chasm between the few elite controlling the majority of wealth and the burgeoning poor, is a recipe for global insecurity. Read: violence. All around us are teachable moments in living classrooms with test case after test case: Darfur, Rwanda, New Orleans, Haiti, the Maldives, Pakistan, Afghanistan, even Las Vegas, and then picture the vulnerable underbelly of culture – displaced populations. Now we’re forced to understand the underlying and systemic problems the globe faces environmentally, politically and economically. Throw in despotism, hegemony and the skilled surgery of capitalism, empire building and general multinational corporation exploitation, and anyone can see the developing photo of tomorrow’s world. The big boys on the block – call them G-8, G-20, the Industrialized Nations, Developed Countries – are also positioning themselves to be the big fish, strategically placing resources and political and economic energy to dominate what’s still left of easily accessed oil, water, good soil and other resources that keep our post-industrialized nations’ lifestyles hefty. Luckily for Washington State and the region, the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington is grappling with climate change as a potential driver of global security issues – and not just from the dominant countries’ points of view. At a recent training session, the Center for Global Studies looked at human migration patterns, resource shortage, water wars, food, energy, disease, and armed conflict as factors creating a world of instability and vulnerability. “We can think of this as limiting the damage of warfare,” said Al-Qawi Majidah, with the American Red Cross working with family tracking cases. The ultimate goal, according to Tamara Leonard of the CGS, is to bring the world into the classroom, and this seminar brought participants from various disciplines and Washington community college campuses to engage in roundtable discussions about exactly what security is in the context of a single military superpower (US) and emerging new economic giants (India and China). The world, like a bunch of people in a room, is not so easily compartmentalized, and participants came at the topics with our various frames. In concert with this look at global security is the Northwest International Education Association’s push to internationalize classrooms and curriculum, which can force us to consider how important international issues are to our own understanding of global challenges like energy, war, poverty, disease, climate change, food. The overarching framing narrative for many is to give voice to the majority of the world that isn’t North America, Europe or other global economic giants. Solving problems is truly a question of scale and local talents, views and resources. Climate change, as we are realizing, crosses geographic, economic, political, cultural and religious boundaries. There’s a new lexicon tied to climate change, on the technical side and in popular lingo. There are hundreds of systems, terms and processes in the glossary, including some real conversation stoppers: albedo effect, atmospheric lifetime, black carbon, carbon intensity, cryosphere, enhanced greenhouse effect, feedback mechanisms, geosphere, hydro (chloro) fluorocarbons (HCFs & HCFCs), hydrologic cycle, residence time, ozone depleting substance (ODS), thermohaline circulation, volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These are a few concepts to understand the global greenhouse effect, both amplified and catalyzed by our burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and land use tied to everything, including agriculture. It’s a virtual smorgasbord of geophysics and atmospheric science, rolled up into paleobiology, oceanography, and a hundred other sciences. This is, however, the story of human’s destiny, our insecurities that cause us to over-consume –or our growing ecological footprint — and what we intend to do about the collapsing and highly vulnerable economic, social, and cultural systems we’ve constructed over eons to undergirder civilization. Now think habitation, energy, food, water and political stability with a huge dose of economic sustainability, and you have the general framework of global security. How children and women fit into the equation, as well as access to education, worm their way into the broader picture. Cooperation is a must in global security. With 15 armed conflicts currently taking place around the globe, and untold cultures of violence as we see in Mexico’s narco-wars, it’s clear that innocents get caught in the crossfire. While war is bizarre and primitive in modern times, there is even a more powerful trump than battlefields: rising temperatures and seas put everything at risk. More new vocabulary: envirogee, climate refugee, climate migrant, climate exile, environmental persecution. Upwards of 250 million people worldwide will be displaced by 2050 because of climate change’s role in collapses and disruptions, according to many working this end of the policy front. Their extreme hardship and vulnerability will transfer to the more “insulated” countries, like neighboring nations, even rich ones, which will also be potentially facing huge infrastructure challenges associated with population pressures (too many overall, not enough young workers, too many aging folk) of their own and dwindling economic and physical resources. Many in Washington State fear outside “invasions” — we still have water, forests and space but sooner or later “they” will come here in hordes. During three days at the Henry M. Jackson, experts concluded that true global security is about understanding the connection we have to each other, to the global reserve of resources, and the negative effects of overharvesting, over-polluting and hoarding. As is always the case, the empty belly is the great motivator. “A world where 1 billion people are hungry is not just a deep stain on our collective conscience,” said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission. “It is a growing threat to global security. If the financial crisis has taught us anything, it is that, if we ignore risks building up in the system, it is much harder to manage them… Like the fight against climate change, the fight against hunger can’t wait.” Braden Born, a UW urban planner and another participant, expanded on the value of food above all other security concerns. “Food is a unifying concept,” he said. “It’s the nexus for people, policy, place … that’s where the action is.” Born emphasized food should be thought of as a community not commodity, and sees food justice, food democracy and food sovereignty as the rallying cries for global security. Judging from the three-day workshop, college instructors got the basics of security through the food formula – “Food security and food access come about if we allow people to grow food.”