Climate Change is a Real National Security Threat, Even for a Realist
Sep 1st, 2009 | 25 responses
Guest post by Michael Lieberman
Michael Lieberman, a Truman National Security Project fellow, is an associate at Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington D.C., where he works on international regulatory and compliance issues. He was previously a law consultant at The Asia Foundation. (The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Steptoe & Johnson LLP.)
In a recent piece, Stephen Walt takes a skeptical view of the U.S. government’s developing view of climate change as a national security issue, as detailed in a recent Department of Defense-funded think tank report by CNA and increasing interest by Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The calamities portended by droughts, famines, refugees, storms, and floods in far-flung places do not, Walt suggests, obviously or necessarily pose a danger to the United States. Consequently, the country ought not exaggerate the threat, nor think of the consequences in terms of security at all. Rather, any U.S. military action to respond to climate-related disasters should be considered humanitarian in nature. “Climate change might also foster instability in various ‘volatile areas,’” he continues, “but it does not immediately follow from that observation that U.S. interests will necessarily be affected in any significant way.”
Matt Yglesias is also nonplussed: “This talk of climate change as a national security threat has a bit of a whiff of hubristic imperialism about it as I don’t think it makes a ton of sense to look at every possible instance of drought, famine, mass migration, civil conflict, and human tragedy abroad as a ‘threat’ to the United States per se.” Yglesias offers little to respond to, aside from noting how much he must have relished concocting the term “hubristic imperialism” and how inapposite it is. His position is interesting, though, as an example of the left’s almost reactive aversion to viewing multifaceted and largely non-military issues through the lens of security at all. What else explains the exaggerated charge of hubris and empire at a problem that the left in general rightly and loudly champions?
Walt’s argument is more elaborate and compelling, and follows directly from his grounding in (and espousal of) “realist” foreign policy strategies. Before looking at his substantive points, though, we should address the extensive hedging surrounding his argument. It need not “immediately follow” that U.S. interests “will necessarily be affected” by global warming catastrophes for us to treat them as potentially dire national security threats. These straw men must be put to pasture. It is sufficient for a non-negligible risk of danger to the nation to arise from the consequences of climate change for national security planners to think about it seriously.
Walt’s major point — that we should not equate catastrophes abroad due to global warming with threats to the security of the nation — derives from his bare bones notion of national security. Walt’s definition seems to be limited to external, essentially man-made dangers affecting our homeland or our citizens. Indeed, this is in large part why he calls for the United States to curtail its global engagements, exercise restraint in its global leadership, and let its allies shoulder a greater burden of their own defense.
Such a definition of the U.S. role, in my view, is inordinately spare, but that issue need not detain us. For now we can adopt his view. Even if we limit our definition to real mortal threats directed at U.S. citizens in the homeland, the consequences of climate change ought to raise the alarm.
Let’s consider Walt’s recognition of “instability in ‘volatile’ areas” as an agreed-upon consequence of climate change, and an uncontroversial national security threat, terrorists who want to attack the U.S. or key interests abroad. Even Pakistan should qualify as a “volatile” area to Walt; it teems with Al Qaeda, Taliban, and other affiliated groups whose leaders have expressed their desire to repeat 9/11 on an even larger scale and in even more macabre ways.
Now think of Karachi, already a redoubt for Taliban and affiliated militants, and the swarms of young men that would willingly join their ranks in the event of mass catastrophe. This would inevitably displace and dispossess thousands of young men in that area and provoke a further weakening of the Pakistani state. Now, in addition to their long list of grievances against the West, these groups could add the crime of polluting the atmosphere and destroying their homes. Similar scenarios could play out in other areas of Pakistan as well, as the Himalayan glaciers melt precipitously, causing flooding inland, and as rising temperatures diminish agricultural production upon which so many poor Pakistanis rely (including many of the Taliban’s local foot soldiers).
Beyond bolstering the ranks of Islamic terrorists, entirely new anti-Western groups could arise in other hard-hit areas of the world that blame their predicament on the fact that the United States accounts for a quarter of the world’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions, and surely a much larger share (from which we have become fabulously wealthy) over time. Such groups could strike U.S. assets or citizens abroad, demanding compensation or resettlement, or merely out of revenge.
Nor can traditional interstate conflict be ruled out either, as China and India, or Syria and Israel, become thirstier and the value of water rises, making military conflict a more plausible mode of dispute settlement. Such fights may fall outside of Walt’s strict definition of national security, true, but there can be no question that such scenarios would rightly be viewed as a grave security development to the United States.
Walt and Yglesias ignore such routine observations, seemingly due to some vague notion that the CNA report and the Pentagon are hyping the threat in service to the military-industrial complex. While it goes without saying we must match our response to the threat, and not all climate change catastrophes will warrant a response as a matter of national security (not all military missions would constitute such a response, e.g., humanitarian operations), there can be little doubt that heightened global instability will lead to the creation or revitalization of groups that want to damage the United States or its people. It is not a sufficient response to attribute this well-founded fear to hype or to overly broad definitions of national security.
As general Anthony Zinni (ret.) states, “It’s not hard to make the connection between climate change and instability or climate change and terrorism.” Nor is it hard to make the connection between climate change and U.S. national security, however defined. Hopefully Walt, Yglesias, and others will see this linkage and lend their voices to crafting constructive responses rather than dismiss the real dangers we face.
(This post was originally published at Operation FREE.)
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25 Responses to “Climate Change is a Real National Security Threat, Even for a Realist”
The only question about the “climate change” religion is: what 90s percentage of it is garbage or worse.
About 10% or less of the science related to climate change is garbage. I the rest is solid science. Of course, you are always going to find a quack/industry hack who will dispute this. That guy who does the “Junk Science” website is a fine example. He doesn't even think tobacco smoke causes cancer (which I'm sure had nothing to do with getting paid by the tobacco companies, just like his current stance on climate change has nothing to do with the cash the oil, etc industry are shoveling him.)
In addition to legitimate questions about what is and what isn't good science, there's the problem of bad politics (and PC, and celebrity, and this year, poor legislation, no matter how delighted the little green fascists and their ecstatic beat-off brigade choose to feel about it, etc.) that dwarfs and subsumes what is (and isn't) science here.
All in all: the correct question remains: Where in the 90s per cent garbage range is this “movement”?
(And how much worse are those like the already-notorious Congressional Dems going to be due to it?)
The only question about the “climate change” religion is: what 90s percentage of it is garbage or worse.
DLS – Citation please, or just claim 900%.
The only question about the “climate change” religion is: what 90s percentage of it is garbage or worse.
First lesson: Ideology does not trump science. . . no matter how often your talk radio mentors say it does.
Don't play games, Rudi. I've not precisely placed where on the range the value belongs, but what's obvious is obvious. Citation- or study-demanding, etc., games don't count. There's no need to cite all publications and recordings of broadcast material from the early-to-mid 1980s.
* * *
“I the rest is solid science”
The topic and real science is actually a fascinating subject that has been hijacked. (In earlier times, it was the “population explosion” [whereas the West faces declining fertility, and fertility nearly everywhere has diminished substantially since 1960; the problem of low fertility and future aging is world-wide], or the “limits to growth” [think "Club of Rome"], and how “global warming” or currently [as the climate is not always warming] “climate change”. In each instance the “solutions” to the “crisis” are the same: much more government intervention, direction, control, and regulation, and policy aimed at liberal agenda items.)
When it's not routinely tainted by politics and corrupted (including PC celebrity Nobel Prize nonsense related to it), it's neglected, such as on Weather Channel, which has become info-tainment with disaster stories like bear attacks (which I've seen) and other entertainment in place of routine stories on things that include climate, which obviously should accompany anything devoted full-time (at least nominally) to weather and atmospheric phenomena (and the science associated with it).
Get rid of the junk and head instead toward science and engineering research while imposing reasonable and sensible regulations to address real pollution, etc.
DLS, thanks for just demonstrating my point. Your fear of what you refer to as the “liberal agenda” is interfering with your reason on this issue. You should be informing your views based on science, not ideology or fear of an ideology. The phenomenon of AGW cares not a whit about your ideology.
A search at Scientific American yields this:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/search/index….
I think this article is a good example:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?i…
This 90% says otherweise!!
[...] Read the original post: Climate Change is a Real National Security Threat, Even for a Realist [...]
I reuse to take seriously any government that is prepared to declare CO2 a “pollutant”.
“Ideology does not trump science”
It hasn't stopped the Movement from trying, nevertheless.
California's zero-emission mandate goals were never (poof!) going to be easily and quickly achieved.
But some fools have no problem with fools actually subjecting us to their goofy energy policy dreams in Washington, not merely in California. Now we have a play-pen silly energy policy in Washington.
[sigh]
Wind and solar are not (poof!) going to replace coal and nuclear power plants. (Transport is ignored other than fuzzily dreaming “sometime soon” of electric cars or something similar; no aircraft ideas.)
As for warming (if we really are), with or without a human effect (whatever it may be) on this, there never has been (among normal, intelligent people, at least) cause for alarm, catastrophism, or the usual 60s-onward “solutions” (primarily directed at the West rather than where problems necessarily are greatest) to the latest “crisis” with “legs.” There's no reason we cannot adapt to any change (not to mention that change could be for the better, not only for the worse, but that's Politically Incorrect). There is obviously no reason why we should deliberately (and perversely) cripple ourselves and assume costs we needn't assume due to silly-to-sinister liberal politics, not science or sanity.
[sigh]
“You should be informing your views based on science, not ideology or fear of an ideology.”
This is, of course, properly directed at the correct people, but you are mistaken with that detail, too.
DLS, wind and solar are (poof) going to replace coal and nuclear. I say that as a homeowner whose home is 100% wind powered. Within a few months, we'll have enough PV on the roof to replace 100% of that wind power and free it up for others. Oh, btw, speaking of free, wind power is no more expensive than dead dinosaur power, and less than half the cost of nuclear.
You consistently deride solar and wind in a way that makes me think you're stuck in the 70s. The only legitimate point you've made, IMO, concerned transmission. It's true that to displace ALL petropower, you'd need more grid infrastructure because the wind doesn't blow all the time. Now, couple wind and solar with vehicle to grid storage, and you've solved most of the issues with both traditional and alternative energy sources.
The best application of solar is local, not central, as solar power is distributed everywhere. Centralized solar will need to rely on storage, such as liquid metal, frozen water, pumped water, etc. I have no problem with natural gas backup for now, as a base load. Here in Colorado, we've installed enough wind power to eliminate the need for another coal fired power plant.
“wind and solar are (poof) going to replace coal and nuclear”
I'll believe it when it actually looks to be that way, including when we have the storage problem solved. (To me it's interesting how the starry-eyed people thinking about batteries for electric ground vehicles — no aircraft — actually neglect the larger maret that includes storage of power someday of wind and solar, as well as replacing existing batteries in existing markets, and creating new ones. Note that I am not unrealistic about expecting such a thing soon. And it didn't require my previous experience working at a battery company to justify such an obvious position to take.)
Certainly the storage problem, as well as wind and solar, merit additional public R&D work.
“You consistently deride solar and wind in a way that makes me think you're stuck in the 70s.”
Actually, it's the proponents that are stuck there (if not in the earlier Sixties). This is so despite the real-world change we've seen since then (including the wind farms I bicycled and drove by in California before I left that state). It's still quite naive. I'll admit that while there's much wrong with the enviros and their “climate change” nonsense, some of it can be touching — those Empower America ads that have the lead character wearing green. (I haven't determined yet if the lead character has green eyes.)
“The only legitimate point you've made, IMO, concerned transmission. It's true that to displace ALL petropower, you'd need more grid infrastructure because the wind doesn't blow all the time. Now, couple wind and solar with vehicle to grid storage”
Well, improving our transmission would also have been a good stimulus project. (It also could have been, and could still be, a rare instance of compromise among power companies and their opponents.)
The long-term future I foresee is electric vehicles (imagine the overall efficiency improvement as well as pollution reduction and noise reduction), and ultimately fuel-cell vehicles and other uses of fuel cells, which truly make off-grid power supply workable (especially when there's no sun or wind). I've also wondered about fuel cells someday not only for shipping, but to drive propellers on aircraft. (An aircraft like that is slower than a jet, but if it were cheaper to use and cost less to fly on it, great.)
With fuel cells and with local (small, low-powered) solar or wind as you describe,
“The best application of solar is local, not central, as solar power is distributed everywhere.”
consider not only the cases concerning many people — about real pollution and resource scarcity, not about global warming — involving China (and India), but also the truly undeveloped world, and modern (improved) wind and solar in, say, Africa. There's an eventual market for it (and no, I don't consider creating and filling such a market to be “neo-colonialism” as the Chomsky people would).
I will note one thing I thought about when it comes to fuel cells, in addition. The hydrogen cell has water vapor as its exhaust. I'm not concerned about any global warming effect, though it could be significant at the local level (where I like the idea of green pavements, roof gardens, etc., anyway).
The other thing I'll note is amusing, something I read that is extreme but reasoned speculation about wind power: If enough wind energy was extracted (converted to other forms) by sufficient wind energy development to meet all conceived uses or application desires, might it disrupt or otherwise interfere with weather and climate?
“solar power is distributed everywhere”
But it's diffuse, and intermittent, and not used efficiently enough yet. (Yes, meriting government R&D.)
I don't know if or when electricity will get so expensive in the distant future that solar will displace green (truly green — garden) roofs for summer day peak shaving.
* * *
“Here in Colorado, we've installed enough wind power to eliminate the need for another coal fired power plant.”
Colorado is in a blessed place (for solar as well as for wind). Others aren't so blessed, though.
Conservation can be significant, but this strategy is terribly hyped (when not perverted into self-crippling).
“The nation will continue to grow and its energy needs will continue to grow.”
http://images49.fotki.com/v1521/photos/2/292835…
“there never has been (among normal, intelligent people, at least) cause for alarm”
Well, aside from your self-proclaimed role of arbiter of what is and isn't “intelligent” and “normal”, you might want to file the rest of your statement for future reference. I don't know how old you are, if you have children or grandchildren, but this issue isn't just about your own generation. Looking very far down the road hasn't always been a hallmark of many rightward leaning folks (environmentally speaking) but you may want to consider thinking beyond your own skin here. Then again, if you've bought into AGW as a hoax, liberal conspiracy, or religion (funny one this last), you won't bother with any of that.
The list of things that are bad for you if there is too much for your system to deal with them properly is lengthy. In the case of our ecosystem we generally define things that negatively impact our ability to exist comfortably on this planet as bad things. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. If concentrations of it in the atmosphere increase and all other factors stay the same temperatures will increase. We have had the oceans serve as “sponges” for a great deal of our CO2 production. Unfortunately when that occurs it eventually results in the production of increasing amounts of carbonic acid in the oceans. Exactly what about that is good? Then, of course there are the potential secondary effects. Warming is not evenly distributed and the Arctic is a region that is warming more than much of the rest of the earth. And a secondary effect of the Arctic getting warm enough for the permafrost to thaw could quite readily be a massive release of even more greenhouse gases in the form of methane, boosting temperatures and destabilizing the system we depend on even further. So yes, more CO2 than our ecosystem can tolerate without having side effects that are bad for us could easily be considered a pollutant.
GD -
Food for thought. The importance of base load power sources
Renewable energy is a great concept, but to ignore its limitations and pretend there are identified solutions to the baseload problem for wind and solar makes no sense.
Nuclear is still one of the best current solutions, and I for one have not given up on fusion as the next baseload solution, particularly Polywell fusion.
good comments DLS. AR, the Polywell fusion looks very interesting indeed. I'm aware of the base load issues and think we will need natural gas generation until we solve the storage problem. Or I should say storage cost problem. Actual storage of energy can be done in many ways. By far the most cost effective is vehicle to grid, in which the utility's customers willingly install storage capacity via plug in hybrids. At night, when energy is cheap and abundant, my car charges. While I'm at work, the utility can draw from it to meet peak demand. Works with pure electrics, but is more complicated, as it needs to maintain enough charge in my batteries to get me around.
My point is mainly that these wind, solar and conservation strategies are available now, it's not some future pipedream, and if we commit to it, as I have in my personal life, we'll be far better off than if we invest in going ever further down the petroleum and coal highway. Right now investing in energy retrofits (ahem, green tech) is the wisest investment an investor can make, in terms of ROI. Look at the rate increases in electricity and natural gas and try to find guaranteed growth in any investment that matches it. I'm betting that with China, India and others competing with us for resources, rates will increase even faster than the 5-8% projected by utilities today. If not? so what. My payback is a little longer (11 years on the solar). BTW, thanks stimulus. My $30K system will cost me $10 K out of pocket.
AR, it's not surprising you love nuclear. It's a physicist's dream and a huge techno toy. But the economic facts are really against it. First, without the federal government excusing them from carrying insurance (Price Anderson Act), they are out of business tomorrow. The risk experts in the insurance industry have already said “no way” to nuclear. [as an aside, it's curious that those who speak out for 'personal responsibility' with respect to insurance and health care, are fine with the nuclear industry being 'on the dole' to create a false viability.]
More importantly, uranium will run out as quickly as oil and is already experiencing cost increases higher than oil. It takes 10 years to get a nuclear plant online and already it doesn't compete economically. Nuclear is 8-11 cents a kwh vs 5 for wind. There's a lot of speculation involved with projecting the economic reality ten years out, but no speculation on wind energy. It's already cheaper and as I noted, can be installed much more quickly than nuclear.
“good comments DLS”
[gasp]
“My point is mainly that these wind, solar and conservation strategies are available now”
Yes, but how good are they (as opposed to what so many activists, including those in Washington who insist we adopt them out of political reasons first and foremost) and how cost-effective are they as well as how effective and practical?
“uranium will run out as quickly as oil”
1. Sea water? (Especially if we're deluged with rapid melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice?)
2. What about reprocessing and breeder reactors, which Carter killed in the 1970s due to politics?
3.
“federal government excusing them from carrying insurance (Price Anderson Act), “
Tort reform is long overdue. It's bad enough that the word already is out that the law firms in DC are salivating at the prospect of “greenhouse gas” “pollution” [sic] legal actions, but you know how very ignorant so many people are and how voracious the LegaLottO crowd would be toward nuclear power in the event of anything remotely resembling an accident nowadays. (The facts are last on the list!)
James Lovelock's “The Revenge of Gaia” is good reading, even though he goes to extremes that are not only dismal but misanthropic (the kind of stuff directed specifically at the West and especially at the Evil USA by so many others). He discounts the serious renewable for base load, biomass, as bad because it involves combustion and because it would mean alteration of so much more of the surface of the Earth. He doesn't pay much attention to solar and he singles out wind as a popular savior by many, but unworkable. (He quotes someone in Denmark or the Netherlands as saying it has actually amounted to something like a “three per cent solution” of that nation's energy needs.) And he defends his position on fission power as a current non-polluting means until fusion can be had.
“nuclear. It's a physicist's dream and a huge techno toy.”
Let's look at that for a second — ignoring the toy views of the Left that are the real issue here.
Look at nuclear as an engineer's dream and a toy.
Fair enough — I view it in a similar way to helicopters. The timing is somewhat different (earlier for helicopters than for nuclear power plants, and nuclear propulsion for vehicles on earth as well as in space). But with helicopters, also, the initial view was much less inhibited then than it is now, and back then there was huge initial ambition. Helicopters would be used for all kinds of purposes, and that included helicopters as the logical replacement of the automobile for everyone (including the commuter-related scenes you may have seen on magazines).
Reality is different (and with nuclear, involves costs) — helicopters now are seen as the perfect application for — those things for which everything else is impractical or infeasible. Often the use of helicopters is avoided unless there's no realistic alternative. They're too costly to maintain and run.
(With nuclear power, it's the construction costs; running it competes with coal. Many neglect the decommissioning costs.)
Beware of the same naive kind of view (in a different, lefty-style way, going back to 60s activism) for wind and solar.
“government that is prepared to declare CO2 a 'pollutant'”
It's ideology and politics over reason and sanity, but it's all about control.
On the local radio here, people were rightly holding it in contempt (while being concerned about the loonier or more sinister threats by the Obama administration and people in it who exemplify what I'd written about “Same Solutions to Current Political 'Problem',” namely people who used to be activists in the “population explosion” “crisis” [sic] movement (so many of whom migrated to “global warming”).
It leads to cynical joking: Will they ban athletic contests, due to excessive exhalation (of CO2)?
Also, don't forget the hypocrisy. Expect protests by you-know-who if Cape Mendocino were a wind farm, for example. (Nantucket Sound wind development has been fought by lefties for years now.)
http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/maps/chap…
http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/
And don't neglect
http://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html
DLS, tort reform has nothing to do with this. If someone's property value is destroyed by a leak, they deserve full compensation. Would your “tort reform” mean that utilities can destroy the investments of citizens, even through negligence or misconduct, and be protected from the consequences of their actions? How anti-free-market of you. So you would use daddy government to protect the poor utilities from the fact that their toy is so much more dangerous than coal, gas, wind, solar, hydro or biogas? Wouldn't that be a dandy false economy? I suppose that tort reform would protect the haulers of deadly radioactive waste on our highways, including dozens of truckloads a day through the heart of Denver. No thanks. And what about the cost of securing reactors, high level and even low level waste against terrorism? No other energy technology represents any such threat. None is more terrifying. None could cause a significant amount of real estate to be permanently abandoned.
And as you mention, the economic nonviability of nuclear doesn't even account for the cost of decommissioning outdated plants. For the uninformed, that means filling the reaction vessel with cement and guarding it for 10,000 years on a piece of permanently devalued real estate.