We know about rising sea levels, drought, and heat waves (going on as we speak). Ocean acidification and species extinction are also big problems too. But how about global warming's effects on human conflicts?
One example is opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. We keep trying to persuade Afghans to stop growing the smack that helps fund Taliban activities and sickens Westerners. We even offer them cash incentives to switch to less lucrative but legal crops like grains. But Afghanistan is currently experiencing its worst prolonged drought in recorded history. Poppies are way more drought resistant than the crops we and the Karzai regime are pushing for. Poor farmers just want to survive. The US is saying no to their livelihood, and the Taliban are saying yes. Even if they don't believe in Sharia and don't wish for America's destruction, what side do you think they're going to support? So climate change is directly impeding our national security strategy. Some may think that buying foreign oil funds terrorism. They may be right, but burning oil of any origin is also making it harder for us to fight terrorism.
Another example closer to home is Mexican immigration. Rising sea temp and El Nino in the 1990s created a massive, toxic algae bloom that wiped out highly productive fisheries in Michoacan and elsewhere. This put a lot of poor, young people out of work and hungry, so of course many migrated north for survival, despite the dangers of crossing into America and the hard life that awaited. Some were probably desperate and more amenable to participate in drug trafficking and violence. So climate change also exacerbated an economic and security crisis for us and the Mexicans.
Unfortunately climate change will hit the people living near the equator the hardest, who also generally happen to be the poorest humans on Earth, partly due to the repercussions of colonialism and Western exploitation. But you don't see a big effort in rich nations to help them cope, especially during the global recession. This is doubly insulting because our pollution and our direct or indirect destruction of their precious forests are the major contributions to the human side of climate change. Instead, rich nations seem to be taking the approach depicted in the disaster film "2012". High walls and lifeboats for those who can afford it, and the rest are left to face nature's fury on their own. Immigration policies and border security are getting tougher in most G8 nations (that happen to be in more northern, temperate zones). Of course there are other reasons for this besides climate change effects, but clearly no one is getting more welcoming. Plenty will die from climate change in the G8 as well (some as we speak), but proportionally much less. If we made certain political decisions, the suffering and death could be greatly reduced, but Washington can't even agree to extend its own credit line, so the prospects of worldwide cooperation don't look great.
More on living with more extreme weather due to climate change: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/25/
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