The White House, the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon warn that climate change will exacerbate long-standing threats to global security.
Canada, the British, many European countries, and indeed the USA have all come to the same conclusion decades ago. They have also made contingency plans and conducted military exercises based on those conclusions.
So, while this is not new or news, the timing of these reports, just ahead of COP26, is a good PR move for the US war machine.
Shane Harris and Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post »
Together, the reports show a deepening concern within the U.S. security establishment that the shifts unleashed by climate change can reshape U.S. strategic interests, offer new opportunities to rivals such as China, and increase instability in nuclear states such as North Korea and Pakistan.
The reports emerge as world leaders prepare to gather in Glasgow next month for crucial U.N. climate talks. And the assessments suggest that the Biden administration is preparing to take on the national security consequences of global warming after four years of inaction under President Donald Trump. During his presidency, climate-related security assessments were routinely suppressed because they did not match his administration’s skeptical stance toward climate science.
The Pentagon report in particular marks a shift in how the U.S. military establishment is incorporating climate issues into its security strategy, analysts said. Until now, when the Defense Department has considered climate change, it has tended to focus on how floods and extreme heat can affect military readiness rather than the broader geopolitical consequences of a warming world. Now it is worried that climate change could lead to state failure.
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