Global warming: Bigger threat than terrorism?
Pentagon study raises eyebrows.
Knight-Ridder reports that a worst-case scenario assembled by professional futurists at the request of the US Department of Defense says dramatic climate change could suddenly become
a global security nightmare. The Pentagon released the report, "
An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security," to news organizations earlier this week after
Fortune in the US, and the
Observer in the UK, carried
extensive reports about its contents earlier in the month.
Pentagon consultant Peter Schwartz, one of the authors of the report, said in a
Knight Ridder interview that while the climate change envisioned is drastic, it's as worthy of advance planning as several other "high-impact scenarios" that came true, such as planning in 1983 for the end of the Soviet Union, or in 1995 for the possibility that terrorists might crash planes into the World Trade Center.
Yahoo News reports that Schwartz and co-author Doug Randall, of Global Business Network based in California, said climate change should be considered "immediately" as
a top political and military issue.
Earlier this month, the
Financial Times reported that an independent panel commissioned by The World Bank called for the
phasing out of all fossil fuels within the next eight years. The panel warned or dire consequences caused by global warming if their recommendations were not heeded. The World Bank, however, decided to reject the recommendations of its panel.
The Pentagon's study outlined some of the security problems that global warming could create:
- Britain could have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020.
- By 2007 violent storms could make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable and lead to a breach in the acqueduct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California.
- Europe and the United States could become "virtual fortresses" trying to keep out millions of migrants whose homelands have been wiped out by rising sea levels or made unfarmable by drought.
- "Catastrophic" shortages of potable water and energy could lead to widespread war by 2020.
- China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. Bangladesh could become nearly uninhabitable because of a rising sea level, which could contaminate the inland water supplies.
In its report last Sunday, the
Observer alleged that the Pentagon has tried to cover up the report, which is seen as
politically sensitive to the White House during an election year. President George W. Bush's administration claims that global warming is not as serious a threat as some scientists have reported. Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says that the
Pentagon's dire warnings can no longer be ignored.
"Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defense. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act." But
Voice of America reports that the Pentagon has
downplayed the significance of the report, saying it is highly speculative. The Pentagon says the reasons for commissioning such a study include a desire to anticipate possible climatic conditions US forces might encounter, as well as the need to know what countries might suffer or benefit from climate change.
And the
Washington Times reports that those opposed to global warming theory believe the Pentagon's report
is being misused.
"Some alarmists are pointing to the Pentagon report as proof that we face impending climate disaster, but even a brief review shows that that isn't the case," argues Myron Ebell, director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "As with past national security assessments, the Department of Defense was presented with a worst-case scenario, not the likely future," he says. "The Pentagon naturally believes it has to research any possible threat – whether it be an alien invasion, an accidental nuclear detonation, or catastrophic climate change." But the
Associated Press reports that study's authors (who also said the report was not "secretive or supressed") asserted the plausibility of severe and rapid climate change is higher than most scientists and
nearly all politicians think. They also concluded it could happen sooner than generally believed.
"This report suggests that because of the potentially dire consequences, the risk of abrupt climate change, although uncertain and quite possibly small, should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern," they wrote. Danny Rabinowitz of Israel's
Ha'aretz argues that, although the Pentagon study is is not based on any special discoveries or on new information, and that it's authors are not scientists, "two elements in the document could have the
effect of changing the discourse about global warming." First, the linkage they study talks about between changes in climate and geopolitical stability. And second, the identity of the study's sponsor, the Pentagon official that commissioned the report].
The sponsor of the report is Andrew Marshall, a Pentagon adviser and one of the individuals who has exerted the greatest influence on Pentagon thinking for the past 30 years. The highest credibility can be attributed to Marshall's joining, at the age of 82, the chorus of those who have been warning against the effects of global warming. Marshall, with his distinct security orientation, is highly regarded in the field in which he has been engaged throughout his professional life: assessment of risks and translating the conclusions into national working plans. He is a professional who can in no way be considered left-leaning or to have any special fondness for environmental causes. Recently, Sir David King, Chief Scientist in UK Prime Minister's Tony Blair's government, has said that global warming is a greater threat to the world's long term security than terrorism, a statement that reportedly upset the White House. He also wrote in the magazine
Science that the Bush administration "is failing to take up the
challenge of global warming." The
Toronto Globe and Mail looks at the
growing confrontation between scientists and politicians over the global warming issue.
Also...
•
Parking lot effect (
Christian Science Monitor)
•
The politics of global warming: Is it nyet or not on Kyoto accord? (
Christian Science Monitor)
•
Science wars (
FrontPageMag)
•
9/11 panelist may quit over Bush secrecy (
New York Daily News)
•
How Britain and the US spy on the world (
Independent)
•
Tomorrow the world (
New York Review of Books)
•
The new buzz vocabulary of anti-Americanism (
National Review)
• Feedback appreciated. E-mail
Tom Regan
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