Heat and the Fury

'A landmark work on perhaps the essential question of our time' - David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth In this ground-breaking book, environmental journalist, Peter Schwartzstein, takes the reader on the first on-the-ground exploration of climate change's contribution to global conflict. From the ravaged villages of Iraq, where ISIS has used drought as a recruiting tool and weapon of terror, to the pirate-ridden waters of Bangladesh - and drawing on more than a decade of reporting from dozens of countries - Schwartzstein writes about the unexpected ways in which climate change is feeding global unrest and conflict. Through the stories of the soldiers, farmers, spies and others affected around the world, he makes sense of a form of conflict that remains poorly understood, even as it devastates the lives of so many millions of people.While researching this book, Schwartzstein was chased by kidnappers, detained by police and told, in no uncertain terms, that he was no longer welcome in certain countries. Yet, as he recounts, these personal brushes with violence are simply a hint of the conflict simmering in our warming world. As Schwartztein's unparalleled reporting shows, there's nothing inevitable about climate violence. In fact, as he sets out, the same stresses that are pitching people against one another can even help bring them back together.

Peter Schwartzstein is an award-winning British-American journalist and researcher, who has reported on water, food security, and particularly the conflict-climate nexus across more than thirty countries in the Middle East, Africa, and occasionally further afield. His writing appears in National Geographic, the New York Times, BBC, Bloomberg Businessweek, and many other outlets. He is a Global Fellow with the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program, a TED fellow and a fellow at the Center for Climate and Security. Based in Athens, Greece, he consults for UNDP, UNEP, and Amnesty International, among other organisations, and regularly speaks at climate security and other environmental conferences. The Heat and the Fury is his first book.