Secretary of State John Kerry told an audience at the Milan Expo that while climate change didn’t cause the Syrian civil war, the drought associated with it aggravated the circumstances.
Washington Examiner:
“Make no mistake: The implications here extend well beyond hunger,” Kerry said, according to an Associated Press report. “This isn’t only about global food security; it’s about global security — period.”
Violence in Syria under the regime of President Bashar Assad has resulted in the mass migration of millions of immigrants into Europe, straining resources there. Kerry said that the already-bad situation under the regime was worsened by climate change and the resulting drought and food shortage.
“I’m not suggesting the crisis in Syria was caused by climate change — obviously, it wasn’t,” Kerry said in the speech. “It was caused by a brutal dictator who barrel-bombed, starved, tortured and gassed his own people. But the devastating drought clearly made a bad situation a lot worse.”