Warming planet threat to all — report
Grim predictions of international turmoil to come
Worsening conflict within and between nations. Increased dislocation and migration as people flee climate-fuelled instability. Heightened military tension and uncertainty. Financial hazards.
The Biden administration released several reports yesterday about climate change and national security, laying out in stark terms the ways in which the warming world is beginning to significantly challenge stability worldwide.
The documents, issued by the Departments of Homeland Security and Defence as well as the National Security Council and director of national intelligence, mark the first time the nation’s security agencies have collectively communicated the climate risks that are faced.
The reports include warnings from the intelligence community about how climate change can work on numerous levels to sap the strength of a nation. For example, countries such as Iraq and Algeria could be hit by lost revenue from fossil fuels, even as the region faces worsening heat and drought. The Pentagon warned food shortages could lead to unrest, along with fights between countries over water.
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes the US Coast Guard, warned as ice melts in the Arctic Ocean, competition will increase for fish, minerals and other resources. Another report warned tens of millions of people were likely to be displaced by 2050 because of climate change — including as many as
143 million people in south Asia, subSaharan Africa and Latin America.
The national security warnings came on the same day top financial regulators for the first time flagged climate change as “an emerging threat” to the American economy.
More frequent and destructive disasters, such as hurricanes, floods and wildfires, are resulting in property damage, lost income and business disruptions that threaten to change the way real estate and other assets are valued, according to a report released by federal and state regulators.
As of October 8, there have been 18 “weather/climate disaster events” in
2021 costing more than US$1 billion ($1.4b) each, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The reports also came as President Joe Biden was preparing to attend a major United Nations climate conference in Glasgow known as COP26. With his climate agenda stalled in Congress, Biden risks having little progress to tout in Glasgow, where the administration had hoped to reestablish US leadership on addressing warming.
The reports “reinforce the president’s commitment to evidencebased decisions guided by the best available science and data,” the White House said yesterday, and “will serve as a foundation for our critical work on climate and security moving forward.”
The notion that climate change is a national security threat isn’t new — the Obama administration said as much, and began pushing the Pentagon to consider climate risks.
But taken together, the reports signal a new stage in US policy, one that places climate change at the centre of the country’s security planning.
Perhaps the broadest and most sweeping of the documents was a National Intelligence Estimate, which is meant to collect and distil the views of the country’s intelligence agencies
Given current government policies and trends in technology development, we judge that, collectively, countries are unlikely to meet the Paris goals. Intelligence report
about particular threats. The report, the first to look exclusively at the issue of climate, said that risks to American national security would only grow in the years to come.
The document made three key judgments. Global tensions will rise as countries argue about how to accelerate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change will exacerbate cross-border flash points and amplify strategic competition in the Arctic. And the effects of climate change will be felt most acutely in developing countries that are least equipped to adapt.
China and India, with large populations and heavy use of fossil fuels, would heavily determine how quickly global temperatures rise, the estimate stated.
The odds were not good that nations would meet their pledges under the 2015 Paris agreement to keep the average increase in global temperature to less than 2C compared with pre-industrial levels, the reports said. The Earth has already warmed by about 1.1C.
If it exceeds the 2-degree threshold, the planet will experience increasingly deadly floods, fires and storms as well as ecosystem collapse, scientists say.
“Given current government policies and trends in technology development, we judge that collectively countries are unlikely to meet the Paris goals,” the report said. “Highemitting countries would have to make rapid progress toward decarbonising their energy systems by transitioning away from fossil fuels within the next decade, whereas developing countries would need to rely on low-carbon energy sources for their economic development.”
The intelligence report identified 11 countries as being particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and particularly unable to cope with its effects. That list included four countries near the United States, among them Guatemala and Haiti; three countries with nuclear weapons (North Korea, Pakistan and India); and two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, that the US invaded in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
The scramble to respond to climate change could benefit other countries, intelligence agencies added, particularly those that become leaders in emerging renewableenergy technologies or the raw materials needed to produce them.
China controls much of the world’s processing capacity for cobalt, lithium and other minerals needed for electric vehicle batteries, as well as rare earth minerals used in wind turbines and electric vehicle motors.
Other countries, such as Norway and the United Kingdom, have an advantage in meeting the growing demand to remove carbon dioxide from the air, the report said, because of government policies — such as a price on carbon — that support the development of that technology.
Federal officials noted climate change was melting Arctic ice, opening the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and setting the stage for competition for resources and sea lanes for commercial shipping between Russia, China and the US, among others.
The Pentagon, which released a report of its own, said the military would begin to spend a significant portion of its budget to incorporate climate-related threats into its planning.
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said it would start making climate change a focus of its preparedness grants for state and local governments. It will also incorporate the changing science into the guidance it provides to the public and private sectors on how to manage risk, it said.
The agency said it intends to hire more employees with scientific expertise, including in its policy-making and public outreach divisions.
“From extreme weather events to record heat, the DHS work force is on the front lines of the climate emergency every day,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said yesterday.
When it comes to migration, the US is already feeling the effects of climate change, with deadly and destructive hurricanes driving migrants from Central America.
People trying to enter the United States through Mexico have overwhelmed border officials at various times since 2014 and particularly during the past six months.
The National Security Council released its own report yesterday, looking at how climate change was already forcing people to leave their homes. The report noted one forecast suggesting that climate change could lead to almost 3 per cent of the populations of Latin America, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa moving within their countries by 2050 — more than 143 million people.
Teevrat Garg, an economics professor at the University of California, San Diego who specialises in climate migration, welcomed the administration’s attention to the issue.
But he said the report could have addressed the deeper question of what the United States and other developed countries owed to climate migrants.
“Much of the carbon emissions driving climate change have come from rich nations but the consequences are being borne disproportionately by the poor.”
As a result, wealthy countries had “an obligation to support climate refugees”, he said.