Spooks scare up the facts on the climate
The spooks cite reality: Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, global temperatures have risen 1.1 degrees Celsius, and at current rates of increase will hit the dreaded 1.5 C rise by the end of this decade.
We knew, all of us smartypants with our heads not willfully in the hot sand for some malign political reason, that climate change posed a global health threat.
As with the novel coronavirus, a threat not only to people — the zoo lions are dying of the virus, just as the freerangers are dying of the heat on the savannah.
The planet is dying from the global weirding, and we’ve known that for decades. Well, the rocks will be OK, and the rivers will return; the creatures aren’t going to fare so well.
But a national security threat? That’s a fairly new one, similar to revelations in recent years that the practical Pentagon has long taken a realistic view of global warming instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.
Which, again, an ungodly number of Americans do, for political purposes that are hard to fathom unless they are not really political and instead just some kind of widespread antipathy toward their grandchildren, the little sulkers.
So, I don’t know, maybe two stick-in-the-mud American minds will be changed by the crewcut, sober, militaristic report issued last week from the spymasters in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The “Key Takeaway” from their executive summary: “We assess that climate change will increasingly exacerbate risks to US national security interests as the physical impacts increase and geopolitical tensions mount about how to respond to the challenge. Global momentum is growing for more ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reductions, but current policies and pledges are insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement goals.”
The spooks cite reality: Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, global temperatures have risen 1.1 degrees Celsius, and at current rates of increase will hit the dreaded 1.5 C rise by the end of this decade. The cause isn’t sunspots or the normal changes in the weather and climate know-nothing kooks cite; the cause is us.
And the next line in the report gets to the heart of the matter: “Countries are arguing about who should act sooner.” Which calls to mind what is truly the worst argument for doing nothing about global warming, and yet still is oddly the one made often by Californian climate deniers: Why should we go first on spending money to tackle the problem, before everyone else does?
These are often the same people who cite the fact that if we were a nation we would have the world’s fifth-largest economy. When that economy demands clean energy, for instance, everyone else has to pay attention, or get left behind.
The intelligence report then gets to the other upside of going green: “competing to control the growing clean energy transition” will be a major economic goal of countries and companies in the next 10 years. Why not us, rather than, well, China?
Not that there won’t be roiled international waters from the heat and the hurricanes that are coming in the near term, say the secret agents: “Intensifying physical effects will exacerbate geopolitical flashpoints, particularly after 2030, and key countries and regions will face increasing risks of instability and need for humanitarian assistance.”
Of course the reports were released at the behest of a White House eager to have something to show on the global warming front as it heads to the UN climate summit in Glasgow that begins next month.
Because the senator from Big Coal had recently shot down any chance for passage of President Joe Biden’s Clean Electricity Program in the current Congress. So now we can go to Scotland and say: Well, we’re trying. Care to join us?