The New Myth About Climate Change Summary

Article Review 1

In Idean Salehyan’s article, “The New Myth about Climate Change", he argues that possible future conflicts over resources will be due to the selfish actions of corrupt government leaders as opposed to changes in climate. Salehyan discusses how the grim future forecasted by prominent organizations has been used by dictators to divert attention away from their own violent actions. He concludes that a combination of technology and democracy could end these problems before they begin. The article is scholarly and peer reviewed. It was published eight years ago in the periodical Current. Salehyan evidently wrote the article for academics with background knowledge in the field of climate change, since he assumes readers have a good understanding of climate change already. Despite some generalization and oversimplification, Salehyan is still successful at persuading readers that resource conflicts are caused by politics instead of climate change.

He fails to mention any other problems surrounding climate change, such as economic issues, since it would be more difficult to argue that these are caused by political reasons alone. Salehyan never actually discusses what different organizations say about climate change, instead referring vaguely to “some scenarios” (3) on the future of climate change. Similarly, he does not always provide information about the studies he uses. For example, he states that “several studies have shown that an abundance of natural resources is more likely to contribute to conflict”, (3) although he never actually discusses the context of the studies. Overall, if he did a better job of exploring the opposing argument before refuting it, then his own argument would have been