Armed forces may be the agents of climate change
THE oceans are getting warmer, coral reefs are increasingly under threat, Arctic ice is dropping into the sea. July was the warmest month in 130 years of testing ocean temperatures. Who are we going to call?
The admirals and the generals. It appears that the US military is as concerned about the fate of the Earth as the man and woman on Civvy Street. And, as history has shown, what troubles the US generals troubles the rest of the world.
Actually what is causing the hairs on the back of their necks to stand up is the effect climate change might have on America’s national security. The depths of that concern emerged recently in a hearing of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations into climate change and global security.
The example to surface at that hearing by several speakers was a speck in the ocean, a place that has been described as a stationary aircraft carrier. Yet the tiny reef of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean may well hold part of the answer in getting the US, and therefore the rest of the world, to act against climate change.
Diego Garcia is a 50 kilometre-long strip of jungle and sand that barely rises above the waves: seven metres at its highest point, but mostly just one metre. It is also of crucial importance to America’s military as a naval and airforce base for South Asia. It is owned by the British — who threw off the native Ilois people and transplanted them to Mauritius to accommodate UK and US military personnel — who lease it to the US. The Ilois have exhausted every legal avenue in Britain and Europe to win the right to return, but that’s a story of conquest not climate.
The change in the climate just might do what the Soviets couldn’t do and what terrorists cannot do: that is, sink the military facility. To keep the base, and therefore American security, afloat the ocean must not rise. The generals want the climate to stay the way it is or was, actually, about a generation ago. They don’t want natural catastrophes because that would lead to power and hegemonic catastrophes. They don’t want wars based on mass migrations of people, social dislocation or depleting resources.
It’s all a bit surreal. Put the national interest as the primary reason in doing something about climate change, instead of the rainforests, for instance, and governments may feel the need to act more swiftly and decisively. If they don’t the nation becomes vulnerable and its grip of global power becomes as slippery as the mooring ropes at Diego Garcia. It is a hard concept for anyone with a non-militaristic world view to grapple, but look at the greater good. Clearly the fate of the Earth is not much having effect on the world’s politicians. Despite the rhetoric, the promise of developments from Copenhagen in December seems to be deflating by the day.
