National Security and the Accelerating Risk of Climate Change
Publisher: Elementa
Author(s): Lee Gunn
Date: 2017
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Prevention, Governance, Peace and Security Operations
Since 2006, retired U.S. admirals and generals have been examining our changing physical world and assessing the impact of those changes on the security of the nation. A Military Advisory Board (MAB, convened by the CNA Corporation, a non-profit research and analysis institution that operates the Center for Naval Analyses and Institute for Public Research) has issued two reports on the changing climate’s national security implications. The first report, published in 2007, stated that the changing climate would be destabilizing in many parts of the world. Climate change, in fact, would be a “threat multiplier”, the report claimed, and result in new and more urgent calls for the American military to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) as well as help sustain order and ensure conditions that would permit trade and prosperity worldwide. The MAB recommended urgent action by the Defense Department to prepare for new missions in new places; and that the Defense Department explicitly recognize missions stemming from the changing climate. CNA’s MAB then published three reports on energy, relating to climate change, one each on: the coming age of renewables, the nation’s energy dependence, and the future of energy in terms of America’s international competitiveness (CNA-MAB, 2009; CNA-MAB, 2010; CNA-MAB, 2011). In 2014, the Military Advisory Board noted that the climate was changing more quickly than had been forecast in 2007. Undertaking a new climate study, the board concluded that more needed to be done, and done quickly, to prepare for and confront the “catalyst for conflict” that the board now saw in climate change.