This week in the USA security was front and center as President Obama addressed the nation on Afghanistan. Did you know that security threats emanating from climate change and its related implications for national security are also on the radar screen of the US Defense Department and the Pentagon?
According to a study by the CNA Corporation, a non-profit research organization that operates the Center for Naval Analyses and the Institute for Public Research “global climate change presents a serious national security threat which could impact Americans at home, impact United States military operations and heighten global tension.” The report, which brought together eleven retired 3 and 4 star US admirals and generals, concluded that:
- Projected climate change poses a serious threat to America’s national security.
- Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world.
- Projected climate change will add to tensions even in stable regions of the world.
- Climate change, national security and energy dependence are a related set of global challenges.
According to an article in the New York Times earlier this year, while “the Pentagon and the State Department have studied issues arising from dependence on foreign sources of energy for years [they] are only now considering the effects of global warming in their long-term planning documents. The Pentagon will include a climate section in the Quadrennial Defense Review, due in February [2010]; and the State Department will address the issue in its new Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.”
In late October, US News and World Report, reported on a Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee hearing, where security implications of climate change were discussed. According to the article “Dennis Blair, the Obama administration’s national intelligence director, told Congress that global warming will have broad security implications over the next two decades. Also, the Central Intelligence Agency has created a new group of experts to study the security fallout of increased droughts, population shifts, sea level rise and other likely impacts of severe climate change, and the Pentagon has embarked on a detailed study on the military’s vulnerabilities from a warmer world.”
As we watch and listen in the coming weeks and months as the World addresses climate change issues and the US Senate debates the climate change and energy bill before it, let’s keep an eye on how the threat to security and the destabilizing effect climate change has on states, comes into play.
