New Pentagon-Heavy US Report Warns On National Security Implications Of Climate Breakdown

[hatrack]

And this morning, NPR talked with Anthony Zinni, who discussed how climate change might fuel terrorism. Imagine that! :eyes:

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The report, called "National Security and the Threat of Climate Change," was commissioned by the Center for Naval Analyses, a government-financed research group, and written by a group of retired generals and admirals called the Military Advisory Board. In March, a report from the Global Business Network, which advises intelligence agencies and the Pentagon on occasion, concluded, among other things, that rising seas and more powerful storms could eventually generate unrest as such crowded regions as Bangladesh's sinking delta become less habitable,

One of the authors of the report, Peter Schwartz, a consultant who studies climate risks and other trends for the Defense Department and other clients, said the climate system, jogged by a century-long buildup of heat-trapping gases, was likely to rock between extremes that could wreak havoc in poor countries with fragile societies. "Just look at Somalia in the early 1990s," Schwartz said. "You had disruption driven by drought, leading to the collapse of a society, humanitarian relief efforts and then disastrous U.S. military intervention. That event is prototypical of the future.

"Picture that in Central America or the Caribbean, which are just as likely," he said. "This is not distant, this is now. And we need to be preparing." Other recent studies have shown that drought and scant water have already fueled conflicts in such global flash points as Afghanistan, Nepal and Sudan, according to several recent studies.

This bodes ill, given projections that human-driven warming is likely to make some of the world's driest, poorest places drier still, experts said. "The evidence is fairly clear that sharp downward deviations from normal rainfall in fragile societies elevate the risk of major conflict," said Marc Levy of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, which recently published a study on the relationship between climate and civil war.

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http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/16/news/climate.php

[jwirr]

1. While I am glad that these agencies are looking at these issues, I

fear what their solutions are going to be. A military answer ususally involves war or violence of some kind and often against the weak. We may end up once again ashamed of our governments answers.

However I think we can already see the answer. We are ignoring Darfur and many other crisis issues. The *ss administration even ignored NO.