Event Recap: Climate Change & Global Security with CCGA
On February 9th, the American Security Project and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA) held panel discussion on climate change and its impact on global security threats. Hosted by the CCGA, the panel included ASP CEO, BGen. Stephen Cheney, USMC (ret.) and Dr. Elisabeth Moyer, Associate Professor, Department of Geophysical Science, University of Chicago. The discussion was mediated by CCGA’s Karen Weigert, Senior Fellow, Global Cities.
Beginning with an overview of the military’s analysis and action on climate change, the panel covered a wide range of topics related to climate change’s impact on global security. General Cheney began by highlighting how climate change is already integrated into many of the planning processes within the military, including the Quadrennial Defense Review and the National Security Strategy. He went on to explain that threats can be split into two categories, strategic and tactical. Strategic threats being the larger, overarching threats coming from instability worldwide, whether from droughts causing mass migration in Mali or increased Boko Haram influence near Lake Chad. On the tactical side, increased flooding of our nation’s bases and interruption of training can lead to a decreased capacity to respond to disasters at home and abroad. While an incredibly challenging task, both the strategic and tactical threats must be addressed when responding to climate change.
Dr. Moyer provided further insight into the challenges of responding to climate change, highlighting communication barriers. Using the example of baseball statistics, she argued that the public is able to understand probabilities when it comes to the outcome of baseball games but unfortunately, the scientific community hasn’t been able to leverage that same language when explaining climate change probabilities. In addition, she noted that there also appears to be “solution aversion” within the decision making community.
After delving into a broad range of related topics, the conversation ended with a discussion on how we can begin to take the politics out of climate change. General Cheney pointed to ASP’s method of making it a discussion about survival. Climate change is a threat to people’s livelihoods and there are serious implications if we do not address the problem. Dr. Moyer added that we need to learn to talk about climate change as it is, a “waste management issue” and a strategic problem that has solutions.
The entire discussion is available in the video below as well as on the Chicago Council on Global Affairs website.
