Climate Change Deemed a Growing Security Threat by Military Researchers

A quick hit while I focus on more substantive stuff. It seems the military has discovered the dangers lurking in the climate crisis. Or perhaps the media has discovered the military noticing.

I’d seen reports as far back as 2005 showing the military getting climate crisis advice from consultants. This is far more recent, however.

From the New York Times:

Climate Change Deemed Growing Security Threat by Military Researchers

The accelerating rate of climate change poses a severe risk to national security and acts as a catalyst for global political conflict, a report published Tuesday [May 13] by a leading government-funded military research organization concluded.

The CNA Corporation Military Advisory Board found that climate change-induced drought in the Middle East and Africa is leading to conflicts over food and water and escalating longstanding regional and ethnic tensions into violent clashes. The report also found that rising sea levels are putting people and food supplies in vulnerable coastal regions like eastern India, Bangladesh and the Mekong Delta in Vietnam at risk and could lead to a new wave of refugees.

In addition, the report predicted that an increase in catastrophic weather events around the world will create more demand for American troops, even as flooding and extreme weather events at home could damage naval ports and military bases.

In an interview, Secretary of State John Kerry signaled that the report’s findings would influence American foreign policy.

That report is here (pdf). Feel free to read and peruse. It’s an update of an earlier report (here, also pdf).

The article also discusses Obama’s expected changes to the rules for CO2 emissions, but let’s deal with that when something more definite than guesses is available.

And naturally, the military links climate change to terrorism, because it has to be terrorism when people are upset dealing with a world that has no solutions — for them:

In March, the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, the agency’s main public document describing the current doctrine of the United States military, drew a direct link between the effects of global warming — like rising sea levels and extreme weather patterns — and terrorism.

“These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad, such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability and social tensions — conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence,” the review said.

But that’s a subject for another day as well.