This past August, in first a blunt report and then a trail of media appearances and press interviews, U.S. military and intelligence analysts made an announcement: The changing global climate now poses a threat to U.S. national security.By way of explanation, the officials expressed alarm (though they expressed it in their usual calm, matter-of-fact tones) about the directly threatening consequences of such phenomena as rising sea levels and melting ice. Some key military bases could go underwater, other bases are jeopardized by increasingly extreme storms and in the Arctic there will be sea lanes to protect where until recently the sea had no lanes.
But more threatening, said spokespeople, would be climate change’s second-order effects: water problems, drought, food shortages, mass migrations, pandemics, civil unrest, political instability and relief emergencies. Any of them could demand a humanitarian response or even military intervention, stated a National Intelligence Council report, which would tax U.S. military resources and “result in a strained readiness posture.”
“It gets real complicated real quickly,” said Amanda J. Dory, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, in a New York Times article. “These issues now have to be … wrestled with” in drafting national security strategy.
The announcement got wide attention — prompting discussions that... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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