Mike Thinks: Does Climate Change Really Impact National Security?

Climate change has threatened land used for agricultural purposes over the last few years. The property is beyond use for growing crops in certain parts of the world -- which amounts to a threat of the security in the respective region. Back in 2014, the Pentagon stated that climate change threatened National Security in a report. With the turn over of the House, more hearings have occurred this year on climate change. This week another hearing will occur. First, earlier in the year, a hearing did occur to address this issue -- climate change and national security.

The hearing held earlier this year (back in April) was titled "The Need for Leadership to Combat Climate Change and Protect National Security" chaired by Congressman John who summoned the testimony of two seasoned political leaders: (1) Secretary of State John Kerry and (2) Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.

The purpose of the hearing is stated below:

Climate change presents a massive and growing threat to the United States, including to our national security.

In November 2018, the U.S. Global Change Research Program released Volume II of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which concluded that climate change “is projected to significantly affect human health, the economy, and the environment in the United States.” The report also found that efforts to mitigate the causes of climate change and adapt to its impacts do not “currently approach the scales needed to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades.”

In January 2019, the Director of National Intelligence, Daniel R. Coats, released the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The report found: “Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond."

Last month, Former Secretary of State John Kerry and former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel led 58 prominent national security officials in sending a letter to President Trump, writing:

[W]e are deeply concerned by reports that National Security Council officials are considering forming a committee to dispute and undermine military and intelligence judgments on the threat posed by climate change. … We urge you to trust and heed the analysis of your own national security agencies and the science agencies on which their assessments depend, including the 21 senior defense officials that have identified climate change as a security threat during your Administration. A committee designed to undermine the many years of work they have done will weaken our ability to respond to real threats, putting American lives at risk

The hearing will examine the threat of climate change to the United States, including national security, and the need for leadership to combat this threat.

The purpose is very clear. Climate Change is a threat to national security. Diminishing resource availability will exacerbate national security issues among nations throughout the world. In the above purpose statement, 21 senior defense officials clearly state that climate change is a threat to national security. The hearing last April shed light on the introduction into the issue as outlined by the Pentagon and other reports previously.

The full hearing is shown below:

Chair Senator Elijah Cummings Opening Statement:

To provide context for the hearing which is linked in the title, below are the written testimonies of each. First, the written testimony of former Secretary of State John Kerry is shown below:

Secretary Kerry

Testimony Before House Oversight Committee

April 9, 2019

Mr. Chairman – thank you, not only for your leadership on climate change, but even more, for your stewardship of a Committee which, at its best, demands accountability of those in positions in power, on behalf of the American people.

Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member Jordan thank you for inviting me and Secretary Hagel to join you this morning, and for welcoming back to Congress not just one but two recovering United States Senators.

I think most on this Committee would agree that there’s a long list of issues where, despite the advice and warning of experts, Washington remains gridlocked.

But at least on most of those issues, no one can credibly deny the magnitude of the challenge let alone the existence of the problem.

The same cannot be said about climate change.

Think about it: During World War II, America would never have tolerated leadership that denied Hitler’s aggression. During the Cold War, no one in public life would have been taken seriously if they didn’t offer a policy to counter the Soviets. And after 9/11, it would’ve been disqualifying to deny that al Qaeda knocked down the Twin Towers.

Facts are facts. But here we are in 2019 where too many in positions of responsibility still call climate change a hoax and advocate policies that will only make the reality of climate change even worse.

Enough. We have no time to waste debating alternative facts only to be forced to invest years more trying to reestablish trust in the real ones.

Just the other month, we learned that the White House is planning to convene a task force, apparently working behind closed doors, to “determine” whether climate change is a national security threat. We already know what the outcome will be: it’s a council of doubters and deniers convened to undo a 26-year-old factual consensus that climate change is a national-security threat multiplier.

It’s a scheme to pretend there are two sides to an issue already long since settled.

In examining the facts regarding this issue you don’t have to just accept my or Secretary Hagel’s word. The designation of climate change as a security issue wasn’t settled by President Obama’s NSC, my State Department, or Secretary Hagel’s Pentagon.

No. It was settled 28 years ago by a Republican President and a team that included Jim Baker, Dick Cheney, Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell, and Bob Gates. In 1991, the Bush administration assessed in its National Security Strategy that threats like climate change, which “respect no international boundaries,” were “already contributing to political conflict.” Each of his successors included climate change in their National Security Strategies. Even after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush’s administration made room in the 2002 National Security Strategy to warn of “dangerous human interference with the global climate.”

There is not a scintilla of accepted science or bipartisan military expert analysis that four consecutive administrations were wrong. There is no event and certainly no scientifically based event or suggestion that the proposition should be reexamined. No.

The factual basis of climate change’s threat originated not with politicians but with the national security community, including the intelligence community. Eleven retired military leaders constituting the military advisory board at CNA, a naval think tank in Arlington, described climate change in 2007 as “a threat multiplier for instability.” Seven years later, 16 retired flag officers representing all branches of the military implored Americans to understand the severity of “a salient national security concern” because “time and tide wait for no one.”

Instead of convening a kangaroo court, the president might want to talk with the educated adults he once trusted enough to fill his top national security positions.

Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats has reported that climate change would increase “the risk of social unrest, migration, and interstate tension in countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Jordan.” Then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told the Armed Services Committee last year: “Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today.”

These officials weren’t making back-of-the-envelope projections about a distant, dystopic future.

Climate change is already impacting national security. The American Security Project (ASP) is an organization of security experts including retired admirals and generals, flag officers who spent their careers in service not to a president or a party but to country above all else. It also includes former United States Senators— both Democrat and Republican. The experts at ASP note that climate change “is what we call a ‘ring road’ issue; meaning that climate change affects all of these other threats....It will change disease vectors. It will drive migration. These changes, in turn, could affect state stability and harm global security.”

Lieutenant General Castellaw and Brigadier General Adams of the American Security Project know the ground truth. They write: “Even as our comrades on active duty in the U.S. military forces plan for the impact of the rise in sea levels in places like Bangladesh, the retreat of the ice in the Arctic and extreme storms in places like the Philippines, members of Congress and others continue to deny the obvious. The truth is that climate change is real and poses significant challenges for our nation’s security.”

As Secretary of State, I visited Naval Station Norfolk. It’s the biggest naval installation in the world, and the land that houses it is literally sinking. In fact, sea levels on the East Coast are rising twice as fast as the global average, thanks to uneven ocean temperatures and geology.

The admiral in charge of the fleet and the base commander made clear what further sea-level rise could mean for Norfolk or for the U.S. Navy fleet, 20 percent of which is home-ported nearby. Increased risk of wildfires can even prevent troops from training with live ammunition.

Willful denial won’t change the fact that our military readiness will be degraded when the permafrost our Alaskan bases are built on begins to thaw out.

And it doesn’t end with military impacts. Climate change didn’t lead to the rise of the terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, but the country’s severe drought and the government’s inability to cope with it exacerbated the volatility that militants exploited to seize villages, butcher teachers and kidnap hundreds of innocent girls. And it is accepted fact that climate change—a prolonged, historic drought— killed off such a vast percentage of Syria’s livestock that more than a million people were forced to migrate to Damascus and its environs, contributing greatly to the violence in that country.

The prospect of a more arid climate throughout the Middle East and parts of Asia will increasingly strain the most essential resource of all: fresh water. We’ve already seen tensions rise around the basins of the Nile, Central Asia’s Indus River and the Mekong in Southeast Asia. Areas facing unrest, instability and weak governance are breeding grounds for violent extremism. Climate change will only exacerbate mass migration in places already enduring economic, political and social stress.

Mr. Chairman, the only people cheering the president’s apparent attempt to erase climate change from U.S. national security considerations, live in Beijing and Moscow. China and Russia have for years been mapping the resource competition, military implications, and geostrategic challenges that climate change will present in an ever-changing, climate-impacted Arctic. What a gift to them if we stop making our own assessments because we have our heads buried in the sand while their eyes are on the tundra.

I know legislating on climate is not easy. I was charged with responsibility of leading the last serious bipartisan effort with Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman. I lived the difficulties. But I know we’ll never get there at all if we don’t listen to our generals and admirals and our scientists. We can spend the next two years debating whether two plus two equals five. But it would mean someday a young American in uniform will likely be put in harm’s way because truth lost out to talking heads.

Let’s debate how to address the climate national security threat, not whether it’s real.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And second, the written statement of former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel:

TESTIMONY OF CHUCK HAGEL

FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE AND U.S. SENATOR

APRIL 9, 2019

Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member Jordan, members of the Committee, thank
you for inviting me to testify here today about the threats posed by climate
change to our national security.

I’m proud to be sitting next to my friend and former Senate and Cabinet
colleague, Secretary John Kerry. We’ve shared many conversations about this
issue over the years. We are both founding members of the American Security
Project, an organization that has led research into the national security
implications of climate change.

In my public career, both in the Senate and at the Department of Defense,
preparing for climate change was an important part of my work. In 1997, the
Senate passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, which laid out the conditions for Senate
support of an international agreement on carbon emissions. Later that year I led
the Senate delegation to the Kyoto negotiations where John was a member of the
delegation.

In 2005, I was the author of the climate title to the Energy Policy Act, creating the
Department of Energy Loan Guarantee program and the international Clean
Energy Ministerial meeting.

In 2007, I led the effort to require a National Intelligence Assessment of the
security impacts of climate change.

As Secretary of Defense, I issued the Department’s first Arctic Strategy in 2013,
highlighting how the military would respond to melting ice and other challenges,
as well as the Department’s first Climate Adaptation Roadmap, detailing how to
prepare for climate change.

I supported the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement because it met the requirements of
the Byrd-Hagel resolution, ensuring that all nations take measurable, reportable,
and verifiable steps to reduce their emissions.

While climate science rapidly advanced over my decades in public service, my
priorities remained the same: any actions to address climate change must protect
America’s economy, environment, and our national security.

My views were always informed by science. As scientists reduced uncertainty
about climate change over the last two decades, it became clear that the U.S.
must implement policies to address the challenge – because climate change is
threatening our economy, the environment, and our national security.

Dating back to the George H.W. Bush Administration in 1992, intelligence and
national security professionals were telling us that climate change posed a direct
threat to U.S. national security. This work has been informed by U.S. scientists
telling us that a melting Arctic, more frequent droughts and floods, and extreme
weather are all examples of the changing climate in the United States and the
world.

Changing weather patterns threaten our national security through its impacts on
military infrastructure, disaster response, and the economy.

We now don’t need to wait for more sophisticated climate models to project the
security consequences of climate change. The impacts of climate change are
clearly evident today.

As members on this committee know, this past year’s extreme weather has
seriously affected our military readiness. In September, Hurricane Florence
decimated Camp Lejeune and caused damage to Fort Bragg and military
installations across North Carolina.

A few weeks later, Hurricane Michael leveled Tyndall Air Force Base on Florida’s
Panhandle, causing damage to 17 F-22 stealth fighters and major structural
damage throughout the base.

Last month, floods in my home state of Nebraska severely damaged the runway
and infrastructure at Offutt Air Force Base, home of U.S. Strategic Command.

As a Nebraskan, spring floods surprise no one back home. However, these floods
were far more extreme than anything we’ve seen. We saw record setting flooding
along the Missouri, Platte, and Elkhorn rivers and across the Midwest.

Estimates of the cost of these disasters to the military are significant. The Marines
have requested $3.6 billion to rebuild their North Carolina operations, while the
Air Force has requested an initial $5 billion for Tyndall and Offutt.

While the bases may rebuild over time, the loss of training and readiness cannot
be recovered. In a February letter to the Secretary of the Navy, General Neller,
Commandant of the Marine Corps, wrote that because of the damage from the
storms, “The combat readiness of Marine Expeditionary Force – 1/3 the combat
power of the Marine Corps – is degraded and will continue to degrade.”

I will close by addressing the proposal by the White House to question the science
behind the national security estimate on climate change. We still do not know the
details of what the proposal before the National Security Council would do. Press
reports have indicated that National Security Advisor Bolton wants to create a
panel that would re-examine whether climate change is indeed a threat to
security.

If this panel were created in good faith, under the legal requirements of a federal
advisory committee, I am confident that the weight of scientific evidence and
present day realities would confirm what I and other national security leaders
have found: climate change is a real and present threat to our national security
which most likely will get worse.

That is why I signed a letter, along with Secretary Kerry and 56 other senior
national security officials, asking that the President not “dispute and undermine
military and intelligence judgements on climate change.” I ask that a copy of that
letter be included in the record.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I look forward to your questions.

Climate change presents threats to all aspects of our society. In future years to come, these small effects now will become exacerbated by the lack of action taken currently. Denying the threat of climate change with a link to national security is extremely risky. Back in 2014, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel gave a speech in which he stated that climate change is a 'threat-multiplier':

Climate change is a “threat multiplier”…because it has the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we already confront today – from infectious disease to armed insurgencies – and to produce new challenges in the future.

The loss of glaciers will strain water supplies in several areas of our hemisphere. Destruction and devastation from hurricanes can sow the seeds for instability. Droughts and crop failures can leave millions of people without any lifeline, and trigger waves of mass migration.

Secretary of State John Kerry stated that climate change has been considered a hoax by the current administration while the past four Presidential administrations have been in acceptance of a growing problem without a solution. The current hearings show concern is real and that a solution is being sought after. How and on what timeline the solution will occur remains in the decisions made by Congress and the administration. Time is of the essence, therefore, hearings are an encouraging development to track in the days to come. Stay tuned!

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