Climate Wire: Security issues seen as selling points for climate legislation
Jessica Leber, E&E reporter
Climate change needs to be treated as a grave national security threat, a move that would also garner public support for climate legislation, a panel of defense experts told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday.
Chief among them was retired Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), the co-sponsor of last year’s failed global warming legislation, who ended his three-decade Senate career in January. In the 1970s, he was secretary of the Navy.
Referring to new climate legislation now being crafted, Warner called for the committee to push for bill titles on energy, national security and diplomacy.
“All of those things are needed to pull this thing through the depth of the fear and concern that lingers on this issue now in our public. We’ve got to convince them,” he said. The former senator last week launched a public tour around the country to help do just that (ClimateWire, July 15).
He further urged the committee, chaired by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), to take a central role in crafting the bill, calling its work the axle around which all other parts should rotate. The reason, he said, is that without similar commitments to climate action from China and India, the public’s support for emissions cuts — and their willingness to fork over tax dollars to achieve them — will be a lost cause.
Asked afterwards whether he would push for a national security title in the pending legislation, Kerry said it was “very possible,” although he was mum on the details because they were uncertain. “There will be something on national security. How far it goes, I can’t say at this point in time,” he said.
Role for the Armed Services and Intelligence committees?
Kerry also said Warner’s suggestion that the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees take a look at the bill was “excellent.” Each committee with jurisdiction on the far-reaching parts of the legislation faces a Sep. 28 deadline for finishing its work.
The full panel echoed committee members’ concerns over the complex ways in which climate change threatens U.S. security.
Congress in 2008 directed the Pentagon to consider climate change in its planning, a process that is now ongoing in its current Quadrennial Defense Review.
That planning is vital, the panel said. More frequent natural disasters, droughts, rising sea levels, pandemics and resource scarcity all will stretch the military’s capabilities and contribute to rising instability in already volatile regions.
“There is a real cost to this climate change and it will be measured in human life,” said retired Navy Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn.
Retired Navy Vice Adm. Lee Gunn, president of the American Security Project, outlined how climate change will alter where U.S. forces fight, who they fight, why they fight and whom they ally with. He cautioned, however, that “by the time threats and risks present themselves with 100 percent certainty, something bad will have happened on the battlefield.”
In South Asia, home of al-Qaida, lie the most visible links between today’s security issues and climate change, Kerry said. By 2035, he noted, Himalayan glaciers that provide water to almost a billion people from Afghanistan to China could disappear.
Awareness of mutual vulnerability could generate cooperation
So far, Somalia has been an early example of how a country can disintegrate in the face of climate-related stresses like drought, said Sharon Burke, with the Center for a New American Security. As a result, the U.S. military has had to act there on issues of piracy, the growing presence of terrorism, humanitarian relief, and assisting neighboring countries to avoid further destabilization, she said.
China and India’s vulnerability to their own disaster risks could be the world’s best hope for getting these nations to make concessions, Burke added. Through “war game” simulations of international negotiations with China, India, the United States and Europeans at the table, her organization found that there is no other way — even with the United States willing to take major steps — for nations to come to a climate agreement.
“This is in our national security interest as well as theirs,” she told the senators. Kerry said he would be meeting with Chinese officials over breakfast next week.
Meanwhile, the military’s public embrace of the threats of climate change could help win the support of the American public, the panel agreed. “Poll after poll, the military is the most trusted institution in this country,” said Burke.
So far, Kerry said, the national security issues have been largely absent from the climate debate. “Today’s hearing’s purpose is to put it at the front and center, where it belongs,” he said.
Warner applauded the effort. But he said lawmakers cannot wait for public acceptance to act, although public understanding will be vital for the long-term success of U.S. climate targets. “I just think that this is the time Congress has got to forcefully lead. We can’t follow the public; we’ve got to lead it,” he said.
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2009/07/22/2/
