Climate change is a threat to the nation’s security.
Politicians and environmentalists who want to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions pumped into the atmosphere are using this argument to woo conservative skeptics to their side in the ongoing energy/global warming debate.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, is among those who are convinced. Shortly before a recent Senate debate on the issue, he and two retired military leaders held a press conference.
Ret. Navy Adm. Joe Lopez, said, “National security and the threat of climate change [are] real, and we can pay for it now, or pay even more dearly for it later.”
Gen. Gordon Sullivan, a retired Army chief of staff, said he was a one-time skeptic. Now he is convinced that climate change will be a “threat multiplier.” In other words, a rapidly changing planet will lead to unstable societies. And instability may mean more work for the armed forces.
“Climate change, national security and energy dependence are all inter-related,” he said. The U.S. military cannot wait for these threats to be proven beyond doubt, he added.
“You never have 100 percent certainty on the battlefield … If you wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something terrible is going to happen,” Sullivan added.
These “terrible” scenarios have been outlined in two think tank studies and one report produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Shifting weather patterns may cause severe droughts, devastating storms, coastal flooding and erosion. Nations may wage war over water as rivers dry up.
Tropical diseases may spread to temperate climates. Widespread population displacements due to these factors may make for an increasingly volatile world, the thinking goes.
Developed nations such as the United States and those in Europe may be able to withstand these calamities. But less stable, underdeveloped countries would have a more difficult time coping.
The Departments of Defense and Homeland Security may be forced to deal with the climate change’s indirect consequences, the reports said. Droughts, famine and displaced populations may put pressure on the domestic front. The Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection may face a wave of so-called “climate migrants” coming from stricken nations.
The Defense Department may be called to provide disaster relief following extreme weather events such as hurricanes. Societies in turmoil are also fertile breeding grounds for extremist or separatists groups. Ground forces may be ordered to resolve conflicts, the reports noted.
The Defense Department “needs to integrate the national security consequences of climate change into national security and national defense strategies,” said Sherri Goodman, the former deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental security and an analyst who spearheaded a CNA Corp. report, “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently chimed in on the debate when it summarized a national intelligence assessment addressing the security implications of global climate change out to the year 2030.
“We judge global climate change will have wide-ranging implications for U.S. national security interests over the next 20 years,” said Thomas Fingar, the DNI’s deputy director and chairman of the national intelligence council.
There will be winners and losers as the planet’s climate evolves, Fingar noted. There may be unintended benefits such as longer growing seasons in the north and new shipping routes in the Arctic. “Nevertheless, many regional states important to the United States will be negatively impacted,” he said. Fingar would not name specific countries, although the classified version of the report did drill down into individual nations, he said.
R. James Woolsey, a former CIA director, is among those who believe that the climate is changing, and that there may be short- or long-term consequences for the defense community.
“We may find that our armed forces are being called up increasingly to a fair number of missions,” he told National Defense.
Woolsey contributed a chapter to the “Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change,” a joint report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security.
Woolsey’s predictions about the possible effects of global warming are more conservative than some of those put forth in the contentious debate.
He likens the placement of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to that of a two-pack-a-day smoker. No one can say for certain that he will get cancer by age 55, but there is a risk.
“I think we’re increasing the risk of things like ice sheet melting by putting so much carbon into the atmosphere,” he said. Some climate change phenomena could be attributable to natural cycles, he said. And no one will ever be able to prove that one particular hurricane is the direct result of a warming planet, he added.
Woolsey is as concerned about energy security as he is about climate change. For him, and many others, the two topics go hand in hand. The United States is overly dependant on foreign oil from unstable regions such as the Persian Gulf.
“Oil presents a panoply of opportunities for and encouragement of mass terrorism,” he wrote in the report.
He recalled sparring with a skeptical Republican congressman in a Capitol Hill hearing, who believed that global warming is a myth. After explaining that many of the actions the nation should take to reduce its dependence on foreign oil would also reduce greenhouse gases, the lawmaker conceded the point.
“Do them for that reason, you don’t need to do them for reasons of climate change,” he said.
Too often in Congress, Woolsey said, lawmakers are not looking at the bigger picture and are just trying to score “debating points.”
Woolsey’s assertion seemed to be proven at a joint House hearing. Fingar presented the summary of the national intelligence estimate on climate change, but had little time to discuss the report’s salient points.
The debate quickly split down party lines with Republicans attacking the methodology of the report, and mocking climate scientists in the 1970s who were predicting “global cooling.” Democrats praised the report and repeated predictions that a changing planet may indeed bring on unrest, mass migration, and wipe out coastal communities. They were more interested in using the predictions to back-up their calls for reductions in greenhouse gases.
Republicans and Democrats could only agree on one point: that the report should be declassified; Democrats, because it would give more details on specific countries at risk, and Republicans, because they believed the full report would expose weaknesses in its arguments.
Although the estimate was the result of a congressional mandate, DNI leadership felt it was appropriate to study the possible consequences of climate change, Fingar noted.
The DNI, despite one Republican lawmaker’s assertion that the study distracted the agency from immediate threats such as terrorism, will do three follow-on national intelligence estimates. One will be an analysis of the possible consequences of “mitigation” strategies that could be implemented to reduce greenhouse gasses, Fingar said.
Misguided energy policies may also weaken national security, climate change skeptics have pointed out.
“An economically weakened America would be less able to sustain its defense commitments, keep the peace and remain vigorously engaged in the world,” said Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute at the House hearing.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who invited Lewis to testify, said “the national security implications of climate change will cause some concerns, but so do the implications of climate change policies that stand to reduce the availability of cheap, reliable energy sources around the world.”
A case in point is the promotion of corn-based biofuels, Lewis said. The energy policies that encouraged consumers to use ethanol in the United States created spikes in the price of corn and other staples in Mexico.
“More aggressive efforts to replace petroleum with biofuels could literally starve the hungry, creating chaos and conflict,” he said.
Because of the verbal jousting, Fingar had few opportunities to address the report’s conclusions. And no lawmakers asked during the hearing what steps the Defense Department should take to mitigate the possible threats to national security.
Climate change and its purported effects on national security is now part of the rhetoric fueling sharply divided lawmakers. But if there is a consensus in the military community that climate change is real, and that it may affect operations in the future, what can the Defense Department do about it?
Preparing for small conflicts, peacekeeping operations and disaster assistance are already goals spelled out in the last Quadrennial Defense Review. At least three Republican members of the joint hearing said the Pentagon and the intelligence community have more immediate threats to worry about.
Michael Levi, project director of an independent task force of climate change for the Council on Foreign Relations, asked, “Is there alarm across the defense establishment about the effects of climate change? I don’t think that that kind of long-term planning is done widely across the Defense Department.”
Woolsey said the services could start by putting their own houses in order concerning energy security. Foreign bases can be more energy efficient. Most rely on local power grids for their electricity, which leaves them dependent and vulnerable to attack, he said.
Responding to disasters requires mobility. And that most often entails helicopters to fly in relief supplies. Rotary-wing aircraft are notorious fuel guzzlers, he noted. Moving the JP-8 fuel used in the military aircraft and vehicles is an enormous logistical burden.
Making future ground and air vehicles more fuel efficient needs to be given higher priority in the acquisition process, he said.
“You radically improve your flexibility and mobility by cutting down on the amount of fuel that these systems require,” Woolsey said.
Goodman said: “I think the [Defense Department] is beginning to get its own house in order on energy. But more can be done.”
The CNA report also recommended that the Defense Department assess the impact of climate change on U.S. military installations. Numerous bases could be affected by adverse weather or rising sea levels. The most notable is Diego Garcia, a low-lying island in the middle of the Indian Ocean that U.S. and British forces depend on to support operations in the Middle East.
“The consequences of losing places like Diego Garcia are not insurmountable, but are significant and would require advanced military planning,” the CNA report said.
Goodman, as the former deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental security, was the Pentagon’s point person for environmental issues, occupational safety and climate change. But the Bush administration phased out that job eight years ago.
It’s time to bring the position back, Woolsey said, but this time as an energy czar.
“There ought to be some senior official in the Department of Defense who can kick derrieres, take names and move out quickly to make decisions in respect to energy,” he said.
Logistics, counterterrorism and climate change should be in this leader’s portfolio, he added.
Goodman said: “I think it’s time to reinstate a more senior visible position on environment and energy security for DoD.”
“It also needs to be reflected in other agencies and the interagency process because there is no doubt this is a national and international priority,” she said.
Both parties’ presumptive presidential candidates have said they are committed to tackling the intertwined problems of climate change, energy and security, she noted.
The debate over climate change and its possible effects on national security promises to continue.
The last Defense Authorization Act required reports such as the Quadrennial Defense Review, the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy to address climate change risks posed to current and future Defense Department missions.