The scary hidden stressor In her introduction to a compelling
new study, “The Arab Spring and Climate Change,” released
Thursday, the Princeton scholar Anne-Marie Slaughter notes that
crime shows often rely on the concept of a “stressor.” A
stressor, she explains, is a “sudden change in circumstances or
environment that interacts with a complicated psychological
profile in a way that leads a previously quiescent person to
become violent.” The stressor is never the only explanation for
the crime, but it is inevitably an important factor in a complex
set of variables that lead to a disaster. “The Arab Spring and
Climate Change” doesn’t claim that climate change caused the
recent wave of Arab revolutions, but, taken together, the essays
make a strong case that the interplay between climate change,
food prices (particularly wheat) and politics is a hidden
stressor that helped to fuel the revolutions and will continue
to make consolidating them into stable democracies much more
difficult. Jointly produced by the C