Not Just About the Coastline: The National Security Angle
Climate Change impacts more than just our physical infrastructure and engages a wider spectrum of interested parties than biologists and transportation planners. In the world of national security the projected impacts of climate change grabbed serious attention somewhere around 2003. Shortly thereafter the analysts in the Department of Defense (among others) began to do what they do best; run scenarios based upon likely outcomes. The results aren’t pretty.
As you might guess, regional and global security are linked to climate changes that affect water and food supplies, human sanitation issues, the spread of multiple disease vectors, and extreme weather events. The US DOT anticipates that China, the Middle East, and the Near East will all suffer greatly from changes that could initiate mass migration, starvation, and armed conflicts. And even the United States will suffer as marginal farming regions supported by rivers or aquifers run out of water. Furthermore, significant increases in tension (read perhaps armed conflict) are anticipated in regions where wealthy countries exist beside poor countries with high vulnerability to climate change and large populations.
What I find fascinating about the report is the seriousness with which the authors take the concept climate sensitivity. This is the idea that a global climatic response to increases in Green House Gases (GHGs) has been fairly well established as being between 2-4.5°C with a small but reasonable change of it being higher. This essentially means that “things happen” when the global temperature changes by X°C and given the built in change from existing GHGs, things are inevitable. Even better from a scientific point of view is the understanding of tipping points and the need to allocate significant funding to monitoring regions such as the boreal forests and arctic tundra for signs of disastrous large scale changes. The point is made several times throughout the paper that these worst case scenarios are not low probability events, especially if the current CO2 and methane emissions continue unchecked.
In conclusion, the people whose job it is to defend our country against disruptions such as war and civil unrest consider climate change to be a real and immediate threat to our (the United States) society and to the world’s stability. Their take on making decisions under uncertainty is well worth the time to read.
