Not an historian, just a lay reader, I believe I have learned that today's major threat is not necessarily tomorrow's; that what seems distant and perhaps unlikely may be the world shaking crisis about to descend on everyone.

Now, we see our greatest threat to be terrorism. We fear another 9/11 or something worse from the fanaticism of the Musim world and their communities within our borders. In a few years, this threat could be displaced by an entirely different and even less tractable one: the reality of global warming.

Slowly people all over the world are becoming more conscious of this dramatic danger. To date, all that has occurred are increasing storm severities and the swamping of some small islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. But the recession of the Greenland glacier, the breaking of the Antarctic ice-shelf, the opening of the northwest passage for a longer season in Canada, these events and more to come will make ordinary people, even uneducated people more concerned about the future.

They will become more worried about droughts, failing crops, intensely hot summers, violent hurricanes, disappearing beaches. This sort of tension can mount beyond the limits of civil order and governments may find themselves having to use harsher measures to maintain order. Calls for more disaster relief, famine relief, help against the spread of diseases from famine and impoverishment will increase. The problem of terrorism will be replaced by worse, or it may be augmented as Muslims are increasingly affected by global warming. They live in the most threatened areas of the planet.

Osama bin Laden may become a distant, vague remembrance as the forces of nature close in on the species that has allowed its technologies to change the climate of the earth in the uncontrollable zeal of capitalist development.

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Remembering Bertrand Russell

Good post. You make some excellent points. We are so focussed on "The War on Terrorism" that we may not be paying enough attention to even bigger threats and challenges looming on the horizon. As tradgic as the 9/11 attack was or the suicide bombings Iraq are, they pale beside the impacts that global warming can bring. I would add the fallout from the growing gap between oil production and oil demand as likely to dwarf terrorism as a concern once it really takes hold.

The solution to that is to find alternate fuels. Im not so worried about global warming as I am about terrorists attacks.

Great post goedel! It's good to see people thinking along these lines.

Check out these statistics:
Should we REALLY be as "afraid" of terrorism as some of us are? (I'm not, by the way.)

I am not afraid of terrorism in that it plagues my mind and adjust the way I live to it... outside of pre-boarding time of course. I do think it is something of concern for our National Security. I think events like 9-11 will happen again, but looked at in the way that "BellaDonna" does in the post above shows the numbers are unimpressive in these attacks which I agree with. However, the main fear I have is if terrorists gain a nuclear weapon... I think then the fear gets ratcheted up a notch because the scale of destruction will as well. So we do need to keep going after terrorists, just not to the exclusion of other major threats such as environmental issues, or oil issues or economic issues. There are bigger issues, like will Lindsay Lohan ever spend time in prison.