White House Announces Steps to Address Climate and National Security Alongside New Intelligence Assessment

Sep 22, 2016 | Schuyler Null, Cara Thuringer, and Lauren Herzer Risi
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Yesterday afternoon President Obama announced a new Presidential Memorandum on climate change and national security. The policy directs 20 federal agencies to consider the national security implications of climate change and establish a working group that will develop a Climate Change and National Security Action Plan for the federal government.

Released alongside the new policy is the first unclassified report by the U.S. intelligence community that examines the pathways by which climate change may affect national security. The concerns expressed in the assessment by the U.S. National Intelligence Council echo sentiments shared by the Pentagon and a bevy of retired U.S. military officers: “Climate change and its resulting effects are likely to pose wide-ranging national security challenges for the United States and other countries.”

The two releases represent major steps by different parts of the U.S. government. The White House memo continues the president’s efforts to instill responses to climate change into the mechanics of the federal government, while the intelligence assessment represents a consensus opinion from the intelligence community on climate change’s threat level to national security interests.