ASP Board and Consensus Members: Climate Change Can No Longer Be Ignored
ASP Board and Consensus Members penned an OpEd for The Global Post and Alaska Dispatch on the threat of climate change to national security.
LtGen Daniel Christman, USA (Ret.), BGen Steve Anderson, USA (Ret.), and BGen Steve Cheney, USMC (Ret.) wrote an article entitled, “The Reality of Climate Change Can No Longer Be Ignored.”
Intended to put to rest the notion that we still do not have enough information to address climate change, the military leaders discuss why operating on uncertainty is a routine part of risk management. Climate change presents a national security risk, and we can no longer afford to ignore it. From the article:
The effects of climate change have never been more apparent. Sea levels are rising by about 3 mm per year. Arctic sea ice fell almost 50 percent below the 1979-2000 average. In 2012, more than 15,000 heat-related records in the United States were broken. This summer the US experienced the worst drought since the 1930s. Unprecedented fires occurred across the western United States. And, last week, the East Coast was hit by a storm unprecedented in size. Climate change is happening and is getting harder to ignore.
While projections of how much the climate will change are clearly uncertain, we do know that the longer we wait, the worse it gets.
Reducing greenhouse gases while implementing adaptation measures is basic risk management. Military planners and business executives routinely operate under uncertainty and make decisions based on incomplete information. If a battlefield commander waited until all facts were known about an advancing enemy, he would put his troops at risk. When 97 percent of the experts tell us that operating on a business-as-usual trajectory will exponentially increase risk, why is it that we dismiss them?
To read the full article, click here.
