Worldwide climate change is a serious issue. Environmental degradation is a serious issue. Energy independence is a serious issue. And when it comes to global security concerns, all these issues come together in very serious ways.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. The IPCC’s series of extensively-researched reports on these problems has gotten a lot of press attention in recent months, and will continue to do so as more information is released.

In the meanwhile, though, the same scientific findings that are causing such well-publicized concern among biologists, physicians, energy specialists, and environmental scientists have also become the subject of intense debate within the UN Security Council, the US Congress and the national security establishment.

Last month a bipartisan, blue-ribbon panel of military and security experts released a study commissioned by the Center for Naval Analyses, a government-funded think tank, called the “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change” report. The Military Advisory Board that prepared this report includes a former Army chief of staff, commanders-in-chiefs of U.S. forces in global regions, a former shuttle astronaut and NASA administrator, and experts in planning, logistics, underwater operations and oceanography. One member also served as U.S. ambassador to China.

This blue-ribbon panel’s sobering assessment? Global warming “presents significant national security challenges to the United States,” which the nation must address or face serious consequences.

Senator Kerry, no stranger to military, environmental, or global security matters himself, obviously agrees with this panel of experts that global climate change does present a serious and credible threat to America’s national security and that of the world as a whole. When the report was released last month, he wrote to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden requesting a hearing on the urgent need to address the national security threats posed by global warming.

JK said that global warming could impact America’s national security by leading to large-scale migrations, increased border tensions, and the spread of disease and conflicts over food and water - all of which might lead to U.S. military involvement - and that this serious situation needed to be thoroughly reviewed by the SFRC with an eye to protecting America’s national interests in a time of global climate change.

This SFRC hearing on climate change and national security was recently convened and included testimony by Admiral Joseph Prueher, former Commander if Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, General Charles Wald, former deputy commander of the U.S. European Command, Air Force, and Vice Admiral Richard Truly, a former shuttle astronaut and administrator at NASA, who was also the first commander of the Naval Space Command. JK’s statements at that hearing were unequivocal: <!-more->

“When a dozen of our most respected former admirals and generals discuss emerging threats to our national security, we must listen,” Senator Kerry said. “We know we have a ten year window to address global climate change before it’s too late. But now, it’s abundantly clear that global warming is not just an environmental threat—it’s also a national security imperative. If we’re serious about our national security, we better get serious today about combating global warming.

“Climate change is likely to result in extreme weather events, drought, flooding and sea level rise. Thanks to our witnesses, we now better understand that these natural disasters are likely to result in political instability in the most volatile regions of the world.

“It is now more imperative than ever to reduce our oil consumption and target global climate change as a major security threat. This is going to become an increasingly urgent matter as we work to create a stable Middle East and a safe home front, and I pledge to work with my colleagues to pass sound energy policy and an economy wide cap and trade bill to reduce our nation’s growing greenhouse gas emissions.”

When the Military Advisory Board’s report was released, several of its members spoke out publicly about their concerns, including retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, who said that “We will pay for this one way or another. We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today … or we’ll pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives.”

According to retired General Gordon Sullivan, chairman of the Military Advisory Board and former Army chief of staff, “We found that climate instability will lead to instability in geopolitics and impact American military operations around the world… People are saying they want to be perfectly convinced about climate science projections. But speaking as a soldier, we never have 100 percent certainty. If you wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something bad is going to happen on the battlefield.”

Retired Navy Vice Admiral Richard Truly said in an interview when the report was released, “Unlike the challenges that we are used to dealing with, these will come upon us extremely slowly, but come they will, and they will be grinding and inexorable.” Truly added that “maybe more challenging is that climate change will affect every nation, and all simultaneously. This is why we need to study this issue now, so that we’ll be prepared and not overwhelmed by the required scope of our response when the time comes.”

In the same interview, retired Admiral T. Joseph Lopez said that “Climate change can provide the conditions that will extend the war on terror. Rising ocean water levels, droughts, violent weather, ruined national economies—those are the kinds of stresses we’ll see more of under climate change. ... In the long term, we want to address the underlying conditions that terrorists seek to exploit,” Admiral Lopez said. “But climate change will prolong those conditions. It makes them worse.”

The Washington Post went on to point out in another article on the report released last month,

Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, who is one of the authors, noted he had been “a little bit of a skeptic” when the study group began meeting in September. But, after being briefed by top climate scientists and observing changes in his native New England, Sullivan said he was now convinced that global warming presents a grave challenge to the country’s military preparedness.

“The trends are not good, and if I just sat around in my former life as a soldier, if I just waited around for someone to walk in and say, ‘This is with a hundred percent certainty,’ I’d be waiting forever,” he said.

Part of the sense of urgency, the generals said in interviews last week, stems from the fact that changing climatic conditions will make it harder for weak nation-states to address their citizens’ basic needs. The report notes, for example, that 40 percent of the world’s population gets at least half its drinking water from the summer melt of mountain glaciers that are rapidly disappearing.

“Many developing nations do not have the government and social infrastructures in place to cope with the type of stressors that could be brought about by global climate change,” the report states. “When a government can no longer deliver services to its people, ensure domestic order, and protect the nation’s borders from invasion, conditions are ripe for turmoil, extremism and terrorism to fill the vacuum.”

The study states that conflicts in regions such as Darfur and Somalia stemmed initially from a lack of resources, something that will only worsen with global warming.

Climate change is different from traditional military threats, according to report author Vice Adm. Richard H. Truly, because it’s not like “some hot spot we’re trying to handle.”

“It’s going to happen to every country and every person in the whole world at the same time,” Truly said.

The report also notes that some military bases probably will be compromised by climate change. Diego Garcia, an atoll in the southern Indian Ocean that U.S. and British forces use as a logistic hub for their Middle East operations, lies just a few feet above sea level. “Although the consequences to military readiness are not insurmountable, the loss of some forward bases would require longer range lift and strike capabilities and would increase the military’s energy needs,” the study says.

The military has contemplated the implications of climate change before: In 2004 it released a study of possible catastrophic global warming that was commissioned by Andrew Marshall, who directs the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment; four years earlier the Defense Department issued a report titled “Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Ozone Protection.”

It’s not just JK who’s paying serious attention to these serious issues, and it’s not just a matter of keeping one’s fingers crossed and hoping for the best. Intelligence planning needs to be done, but technological solutions can be developed and may even spur economic growth in the applicable markets as they come on line.

Senators Dick Durbin and Chuck Hagel have proposed a bill, the Global Climate Change Security Oversight Act, that would require all US intelligence agencies (including the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon, and the FBI) to conduct a comprehensive review of potential security threats related to climate change around the world, particularly for countries and regions that are of economic or military interest to the United States. Rep. Ed Markey, chairman of the newly formed House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, is also proposing companion legislation that would fund climate change plans by the Department of Defense.

And as the Christian Science Monitor reported at the time the report was released,

In a speech April 16 to BritishAmerican Business Inc., a trans-Atlantic business organization, British Foreign Secretary Beckett praised the growing actions of US business executives and state politicians in addressing climate change, including California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced plans last year to work toward a possible joint emissions-trading market.

Ms. Beckett also told the business executives that clean technology is going to create a “massive” market opportunities:

“Those who move into that market first – first to design, first to patent, first to sell, first to invest, first to build a brand – have an unparalleled chance to make money.”

The full “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change” report is available here: http://securityandclimate.cna.org/report/