[Vision2020] Climate Change Threat to U.S. Security: General Anthony C. Zinni: "We will pay for this one way or another"

[Ted Moffett]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/science/earth/09climate.html

 August 9, 2009
 Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security
By JOHN M. BRODER<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/john_m_broder/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

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<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
.

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 last December at the National Defense
University<http://www.ndu.edu/>,
an educational institute that is overseen by the military, explored the
potential impact of a destructive 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<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/john_kerry/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
the Massachusetts Democrat who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations
Committee <http://foreign.senate.gov/> 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 had spoken with
30 undecided senators on the matter.

He did not identify those senators, but the list of undecided 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<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per>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<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/hillary_rodham_clinton/index.html?inline=nyt-per>and
John
W. Warner<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/john_w_warner/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
then senators. The department’s climate modeling is based on sophisticated
Navy<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/us_navy/index.html?inline=nyt-org>and
Air Force weather programs and other government climate research
programs at NASA<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_aeronautics_and_space_administration/index.html?inline=nyt-org>and
the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration <http://www.noaa.gov/>.

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 challenge
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 <http://www.homestead.afrc.af.mil/> was
essentially destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and Hurricane Ivan badly
damaged Naval Air Station
Pensacola<https://www.cnic.navy.mil/Pensacola/index.htm>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 government-wide
intelligence analyses, finished the first assessment of the national
security implications of 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<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/z/anthony_c_zinni/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
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.”

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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