Threat to Security & Your Known World
Monday, August 10, 2009 at 9:08PM Preface by Grant: Remember the blog a few months back (see below) on a coming pandemic? Many thought that to be a silly and unrealistic blog. What about the blog even before that one (see below) on people living in a cemetery? The following article is reproduced as your refresher on what is to come in the forseeable future. Why this article now and why here? I am currently writing a new course for Boston Architectural College entitled "Economics of Green Building" and in the process I was reminded of just how interdisciplinary and complex is the issue of sustainability. This article reminds us all, just how important our efforts are (i.e., the big piucture), especially as sustainability professionals and academics. Could now be the right time to buy farmland adjacent a remote area of the Great Lakes?
Climate change seen as threat to U.S. security
Issue could become central in Senate debate over energy legislation
By John M. Broder
WASHINGTON - The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.
Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.
Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.
An exercise at the National Defense University, an educational institute overseen by the military, last December explored the potential impact of a flood in Bangladesh that sent hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming into neighboring India, touching off religious conflict, the spread of contagious diseases and vast damage to infrastructure.
“It gets real complicated real quickly,” said Amanda J. Dory, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, who is working with a Pentagon group assigned to incorporate climate change into national security strategy planning.
Much of the public and political debate on global warming has focused on finding substitutes for fossil fuels, reducing emissions that contribute to greenhouse gases and furthering negotiations toward an international climate treaty — not potential security challenges.
But a growing number of policy makers say that the world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest. If the United States does not lead the world in reducing fossil-fuel consumption and thus emissions of global warming gases, proponents of this view say, a series of global environmental, social, political and possibly military crises loom that the nation will urgently have to address.
This argument could prove a fulcrum for debate in the Senate next month when it takes up climate and energy legislation passed in June by the House. Lawmakers leading the debate before Congress are only now beginning to make the national security argument for approving the legislation.
Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a leading advocate for the climate legislation, said he hoped to sway Senate skeptics by pressing that issue to pass a meaningful bill.
Mr. Kerry said he did not know whether he would succeed but that he had spoken with 30 undecided senators on the matter. He did not identify the senators he had approached, but the list of undecideds includes many from coal and manufacturing states and from the South and Southeast, which will face the sharpest energy price increases from any carbon emissions control program.
“I’ve been making this argument for a number of years,” Mr. Kerry said, “but it has not been a focus because a lot of people had not connected the dots.” He said he had urged President Obama to make the case, too.
Mr. Kerry said the continuing conflict in southern Sudan, which has killed and displaced tens of thousands of people, is a result of drought and expansion of deserts in the north. “That is going to be repeated many times over and on a much larger scale,” he said.
The Department of Defense’s assessment of the security issue came about after prodding by Congress to include climate issues in its strategic plans — specifically, in 2008 budget authorizations by Hillary Rodham Clinton and John W. Warner, then senators. The department’s climate modeling is based on sophisticated Navy and Air Force weather programs and other government climate research programs at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Pentagon and the State Department have studied issues arising from dependence on foreign sources of energy for years but 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; the State Department will address the issue in its new Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.
“The sense that climate change poses security and geopolitical challenges is central to the thinking of the State Department and the climate office,” said Peter Ogden, chief of staff to Todd Stern, the State Department’s top climate negotiator.
Although military and intelligence planners have been aware of the challenges posed by climate changes for some years, the Obama administration has made it a central policy focus.
A changing climate presents a range of challenges for the military. Many of its critical installations are vulnerable to rising seas and storm surges. In Florida, Homestead Air Force Base was essentially destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and Hurricane Ivan badly damaged Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2004. Military planners are studying ways to protect the major naval stations in Norfolk, Va., and San Diego from climate-induced rising seas and severe storms.
Another vulnerable installation is Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that serves as a logistics hub for American and British forces in the Middle East and sits a few feet above sea level.
Arctic melting also presents new problems for the military. The shrinking of the ice cap, which is proceeding faster than anticipated only a few years ago, opens a shipping channel that must be defended and undersea resources that are already the focus of international competition.
Ms. Dory, who has held senior Pentagon posts since the Clinton administration, said she had seen a “sea change” in the military’s thinking about climate change in the past year. “These issues now have to be included and wrestled with” in drafting national security strategy, she said.
The National Intelligence Council, which produces governmentwide intelligence analyses, produced the first assessment of the national security implications of global climate change just last year. It concluded that climate change by itself would have significant geopolitical impacts around the world and would contribute to a host of problems, including poverty, environmental degradation and the weakening of national governments.
The assessment warned that the storms, droughts and food shortages that might result from a warming planet in coming decades would create numerous relief emergencies.
“The demands of these potential humanitarian responses may significantly tax U.S. military transportation and support force structures, resulting in a strained readiness posture and decreased strategic depth for combat operations,” the report said.
The intelligence community is preparing a series of reports on the impacts of climate change on individual countries like China and India, a study of alternative fuels and a look at how major power relations could be strained by a changing climate.
“We will pay for this one way or another,” Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired Marine and the former head of the Central Command, wrote recently in a report he prepared as a member of a military advisory board on energy and climate at CNA, a private group that does research for the Navy. “We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind. “Or we will pay the price later in military terms,” he warned. “And that will involve human lives.”
This article, "Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security," first appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright © 2009 The New York Times
Reader Comments (41)
This may serve as a simple eye-opener but the impact on our daily lives is greater than imagined.
Posted by Ecoseed The Global Green Portal
Climate Change is a scam.
Posted by Mark Silva
Who really knows for sure? Some people choose to believe, some choose to not. In any case, I think that it certainly cannot do any harm to anything/anyone if we pursue sustainable strategies that reduce our impact on the environment. It also is a good education for our children to think of the world more as our home and less as a trash can.
Posted by Jim McAuliffe, AIA
Exactly right Michael.
Posted by Mark Silva
Mark, I agree. But, it appears to be pretty good as an "academic" job security strategy these days.
Posted by Michael Adams, NCARB, AIA, PP, CVS(Life)
Absolutely. Sustainability is very important and the right thing to do. But to tie it to some made up scare tactic full of lies is completely criminal. Scaring our children into environmental submission with lies is unbelievably irresponsible.
Being responsible with resources and wastes should be common sense and pursued with the smartest technologies possible. Sustainability and good responsible practices should be taught to our children because its right, not because of lies.
Al Gore should be in prison, and the millions he's made in this scam should be distributed to teach children simple responsibility, not make them scared of something that doesn't exist and make them think humans are bad - their very own species.
Posted by Mark Silva
I don't get it. You don't "believe" in warming, or you think the scam is in selling products based on energy savings, or that global warming is like the tooth fairy? So you're saying that disappearing permafrost levels in Alaska have nothing to do with warming temperatures, constrution or architecture? Warming is a huge issue there, where it affects roads, buildings, and even our precious oil pipelines. And that's just the U.S., there are many countries affected by this. Take a look at ocean temperatures. Algea blooms in my home town of Tampa is devestating. This is caused by what, whales with too much flatulance? And personally, I'm sick of having orange level pollution alerts here in Dallas. I shouldn't even take my own daughter outside because it affects her asthma.
Posted by Larry Bloom, AIA
The planet's climate is a dynamic system. It's constantly changing. Even the term "climate change" is simply absurd. It's always been changing way before we were here, and it will continue to change way after we're gone. Permafrost comes, and permafrost goes.
Cooling, warming, ice ages.... whether or not we are here. All life on the planet adapts.
Larry, sorry about your daughter's asthma. I live now and grew up in San Diego, CA, and the air pollution was way worse when I was a kid in the 70's than it is now. Steps have been taken, and are continually taken to curb pollution - more needs to be done for sure.
But global warming alarmism is a dishonest vehicle by which individuals, companies and the government can profit and gain more control.
Posted by Mark Silva
OK, what is not a threat to US Security?
“Or we will pay the price later in military terms,” he warned. “And that will involve human lives.” - Nutter, US was in 20 military conflicts in past 200 years. Of course someone should pay for something!
Posted by Ivan Goloborodko
Exactly right Roger.
Posted by Mark Silva
Can't we all just get along...
But more seriously, I find it unfortunate that we as design professionals have to be "shocked" into acting responsibly and designing sustainably instead of pursuing the wanton abuse of materials, energy, ego and "things" we seemed to be enjoying before our economic bottom fell out. As educated professionals we really know what we should do and even how to get it done. It seems, however, we somehow easily lose our way in our day to day scrambles. Let's not allow scare tactics regarding things over which we have no control confuse our ability (and responsibility) to properly design to the things we actually can control. Just do it and do it well, for all.
Posted by Roger Wilcox
I'm not a fan of the UN and it's view of Sustainable Development and consider it's views to be a major threat to America as we know it!
Posted by Kevin Gilbert
Grant,
Thank you for posting the article, which I actually read before reacting.
The US Department of Defense. The State Department. The National Intelligence Council. These are folks I consider to be realists rather than reactionaries. Not easily taken in or scammed. And they seem to be taking global warming, whatever its causes, as a very serious issue.
The theory that the elevated carbon dioxide levels that parallel the rapid increases in human populations and accompanying rapid industrialization in the past 50 years have only slight impact on larger global processes does not have much support in the scientific community. I'm inclined to base my efforts, and my family's long range plans, on insights offered by Al Gore and endorsed by the Nobel Prize committee.
There's no question that the potential for massive societal conflict is present in relation to climate change issues. I don't accuse those who are trying to point this out to be scam artists. It has, and will, take great effort to cause societal level changes to reverse the massive polluting of the environment that has allowed cheap industrialization to profit. It will take great effort to compel politicians to move out of their comfort levels and reverse the societal subsidy that allows this pollution to continue.
Building a few nice buildings with some more insulation and some cool recycled wallpaper won't make much difference. Nor will sacrificing what we know about good building practice in order to be "green." It could be more is needed. Like getting our voices heard on a community and national policy level.
Fired any developer clients lately because they wanted you to design another sprawling subdivision or strip mall?
Posted by Phil Kabza
Consider the history of the Earth. There have been numerous, severe and long lasting swings in temperatures over the last 4.5 billion years. However, best guess professional estimates place man on this planet about 10,000 years ago.
It is absolutely foolish, not to mention arrogant, for any thinking person to believe that the human species has the power to either measurably increase or decrease the Earth's temperature.
Even assuming the Earth's temperature is rising (although there's virtually no true scientific evidence to support the outragious claims of politicians who are using this false issue to illicit more control over the masses), it is nothing more than the Earth's natural vacillation.
As for "rising seas" and "toppling governments," I think it would be more prudent for governments to be more wary of their mass populations rising in revolt to their oppression by those governments than from the changes in the Earth's temperature.
Frankly, I'm incredulous that any person with a funcitonal brain allows themselves to become a victim of this inellectual fraud. How embarrassing it must be.
Posted by Kenneth J. Jones, ASA
Yeah, sometimes I don't know if I should teach my daughter the most effective ways establishing a career or how to become the leader of her post apocalyptic road warrior gang.
Posted by Matthew McKee
In the context of this discussion, what does the term "sustainable" precisely mean?
Posted by Michael Adams, NCARB, AIA, PP, CVS(Life)
Mark, what are your credentials to question the vast majority of scientists and strategists? It seems that your political views are fogging your lenses. Or is it that "it is only a theory" thing again?
Yes climate change is only a theory, just like evolution and gravity. Certainly you must also disbelieve evolution as well- but as you sit in your chair, are you levitating around the room?
Posted by James Hartford, AIA, LEED AP
Since when do you need credentials to question anything? My credentials are that I can think for myself.
Climate change is not a theory. It's a fact that the climate is constantly changing naturally (see above). Now if you mean "man-made climate change", yes that's a theory that will not be proven, much like evolution like you mentioned. Gravity however is provable.
Anyone who thinks that "global warming" or "climate change" or whatever the latest eco-terrorist scare tactic is called, is not political in nature, is dreaming.
Sustainable - Conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources. Relative to architecture; Creating a built environment that will be viable for the longest period of time possible and need as little natural resources as possible to maintain.
Posted by Mark Silva
This is such a sensitive issue since it touches upon politics and beliefs. By that I do not mean faith, but strong opinions. In any case I am always leery of partaking in discussions that can easily turn in that direction as I do not want to offend anyone. That said, I have no problem with anyone- such as Mr Gore- profiting from his stand on climate change. If he is 'scaring' people into thinking about recycling, less reliance on oil, stringer local communities, etc., than that can only be a good thing. For me, it only reinforces my thoughts on redevelopment as an architect, and my thoughts on bike riding over car travel as a neighbor.
Again, who really knows about climate change. It seems to me that because it is such a vast, holistic issue that credentials mean less than opinions and how you present them. But again, it can't hurt us to tread more lightly on this world.
My only pointed comment will be this. I would not normally associate Gore with prison. I think that's a bit harsh in the light of what the previous administration has left us with.
Posted by Jim McAuliffe, AIA
I agree with everything you said, except that you are condoning a criminal act (imho) because of the result. If that were the moral standard, we would be in even worse shape than we already are.
But alright, some people believe "the end justifies the means". We can't all agree, but we can agree to disagree.
http://www.philforhumanity.com/Does_the_End_Justify_the_Means.html
Posted by Mark Silva
German scientists reject man-made global warming
Growing body of evidence shows anthropogenic CO2 plays no measurable role
http://www.speroforum.com/a/20054/German-scientists-reject-manmade-global-warming
Posted by Bill Yearout, LEED® AP
"Opinions" and "how you present them" are indeed a problem. The Brits got Big Al's number two years ago and exposed his political indoctrination for what it is. Long before worrying about an opinion and a presentation of that opinion . . . consider having the facts straight.
Posted by Michael Adams, NCARB, AIA, PP, CVS(Life)
An excelent reminder, thanks. An additional thought when it comes to sustainability: the "elephant in the room" is population growth. There is virually no talk about this. We are approaching 7 billion people and increasing fast. Our planet simplly cannot support that many people. Over population will make population displacement, famine, and pandemics even more serious.
Posted by Jim Gabbert
The NYT article is a lot of histrionics based on Pentagon war-gaming exercises (which, you will note - were so very predictive of events and results in Iraq, Afghanistan and drug war efforts in Latin America - to say nothing of 9/11.)
You need to remember that the military and intelligence communities spend a fair amount of time with these doomsday scenarios. It's a good way to spend money and make a case for bigger budgets. (Are you still worried about nuclear winters?) However, a skeptical review will indicate that not only is the underlying thesis (global warming) far from universally accepted (which is clearly not the belief of the the NYT) but the supposed results are far from the linear cause-and-effect scenarios they would have you to believe.Remember, computer gaming scenarios require tons of assumptions and can easily be skewed to get a desired result.
Yesterday's (August 12) Wall Street Journal had a headline about electricity prices dropping because demand is dropping - which has happened in only five of the years since 1950. Less demand - less generation - less greenhouse gases. As all the energy-conservation measures (including LEED) begin to accumulate there will be a continuing downward adjustment in consumption. At least for this country - China, India (and other developing countries) still like those polluting plants - yet they were both exempted from the Koyoto Protocol.
At any rate - I've seen too many forums drift off into political discussions which really don't have a lot to do with the the core topic. Let's try to keep this one LEED-centric.
Posted by Jeffrey Geibel, APR LEED AP
A great article -- thanks for alerting us to it, Grant. All about the implications of the global climate change that Bjorn Lomborg used to insist didn't exist -- and then later, admitted it does exist, but claimed we should do nothing about it !!!
Posted by Michael Tyler