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At The Atlantic, Robert Kaplan has a fascinating look (subscription) at Bangladesh and the environmental and political problems it faces -- and it ties the problems of global warming and terrorism together.

The highlights:

With 150 million people packed together at sea level, Bangladesh is vulnerable to the slightest climatic variation, never mind the changes caused by global warming. The partial melting of Greenland ice over the course of the 21st century could inundate a substantial amount of Bangladesh with salt water.

Bangladesh is home to relatively moderate, Hindu-influenced brand of Islam, Kaplan writes, but that is changing.

Here is how global warming indirectly feeds Islamic extremism. As rural Bangladeshis flee a countryside ravaged by salinity in the south and drought in the northwest, they are migrating to cities at a rate of 3 to 4 percent a year. Swept into the vast anonymity of sprawling slum encampments, they lose their local and extended-family links, becoming more susceptible to a form of Islam with a sharper ideological edge.

As a result, Kaplan notes, "women in Dhaka and in the port city of Chittagong (once) wore jeans and T-shirts, but more and more they cloak themselves in burkas."

All of this could result in (more) backlash against the United States -- from a country that right now is pretty friendly, in a part of the world where the U.S. could use a few allies.

Kaplan doesn't put too fine a point on it, but the lessons are pretty clear: It's all connected. Short-sighted energy policies by the U.S., combined with an unwillingness to take real action on climate change, create ill will in the rest of the world, and help create conditions for terrorism.

Compelling reasons to set a new course, no?