The report was ordered by an influential US Pentagon adviser, but had been covered up by “US defence chiefs” for four months, the British newspaper The Observer said.
The Pentagon report, commissioned by Andrew Marshall, predicted that “abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies”, The Observer reported.
The report, quoted in the paper, concluded: “Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life…. Once again, warfare would define human life.”
Some examples given of probable scenarios in the dramatic report included:
Britain to have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020;
By 2007, violent storms to make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable and lead to a breach in the aqueduct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California;
“Catastrophic” shortages of potable water and energy to lead to widespread war by 2020.
