The Syrian Civil War Showed How Complicated the Climate Change-Conflict Connection Can Be

Dec 9, 2024 | Dave Levitan
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Triumphant rebels now control Damascus, a quick and stunning turn in the 13-year-old Syrian civil war that has seen the Bashar al-Assad regime fall and its leader flown to an undisclosed Russian location. The future of the country is deeply uncertain. Its past, meanwhile, is complicated as well: a decade ago, studies suggested that the conflict might represent one of the first real-world demonstrations of a long-predicted idea that the warming climate would precipitate geopolitical instability and war, through a variety of mechanisms. Since then, though, others have pushed back on the too-clean narrative; the reality, like people, and politics, and war, is probably in some murky middle ground.