It's the end of the world as we know it The report by Sir Nicholas Stern on the economic impact of climate change should have us all worried by the bit that caught my imagination was where he said that the resulting depression if we don't do anything will be worse than that of the Great Depression of the 1930's.

This interesting thing about that is not just the suffering that will create on it's own but also the political rammifications of that as the Great Depression played a signifcant role in the rise of Hitler and hence the second world war.

There is the possiblity that the economic and political effects of climate change will be worse for humanity than the mass migration of 100's millions of people. If Hitler had happend today he would have undoubtedly have had weapons of mass destruction and the likelyhood is that he would have used them as he was certainly by the end rather mentally unstable.

This raises the question of whether the world's nation states and international organisations would be able to cope with the coming chaos. Personally I think we are woefully underprepared. We can hardly find any African Union troops to go into Dafur so much tougher challenges we hopefully bring increased resolution but I fear there is a perception in the international community that the price of inaction is less than the price of action. Which as the Stern report demonstrated is completely wrong but none the less attractive to some countries.  ¶ 8:47 pm