Military action on global warming

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I don't have time tonight to comment on this story -- although there is some commentary below -- but check it out:

The U.S. military is increasingly focused on a potential national security threat: climate change.

Just last month the U.S. Army War College funded a two-day conference at the Triangle Institute for Security Studies titled "The National Security Implications of Global Climate Change." And tomorrow, a group of 11 retired senior generals will release a report saying that global warming "presents significant national security challenges to the United States," which it must address or face serious consequences.

The 63-page report -- which is being released a day before the U.N. Security Council holds its first-ever briefing on climate change -- lays out a detailed case for how global warming could destabilize vulnerable states in Africa and Asia and drive a flood of migrants to richer countries. It focuses on how climate change "can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world," in part by causing water shortages and damaging food production.

The study's authors, along with several other national security experts, confirmed last week that the military has begun studying possible future impacts of global warming with new intensity.

Climate change -- or global warming, or whatever one prefers to call it -- is obviously much more than just a threat to American national security. Still, what is important, what is truly essential, is that the U.S. act now not only to prepare for the consequences of climate change but -- and this is where the focus ought to be -- to halt man-made climate change altogether. If it takes a military report, and military leadership, so be it. Given that no leadership has come from the White House -- quite the reverse, Bush has aggressively hindered action on global warming -- it has fallen to other major institutions, such as the military (and Congress, which must provide the political leadership with Bush in the White House), to lead the way.

Again, though, this is about much more than "possible future impacts" with respect to national security. The military will look at climate change through a military lens, and whatever recommendations it makes will likely be military in orientation. What is needed is action on climate change to prevent it from becoming such a threat to national security. This means at its most fundamental the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. And this is where political will comes in. The military may be preparing for its own future, but, ultimately, success will require political leadership well beyond what the military can provide.