Title: The Political Consequences of Climate Change
Abstract: Abstract Over the medium term, climate change and security are not likely to involve simple causality and a stark, one-to-one correspondence. The more intangible third-order socio-political and institutional effects have not been fully appreciated. Only by adding in an accounting of these indirect effects can a full evaluation of global climate change and appropriate responses be made. The scale and scope of remedial actions needs to be commensurate with the problem. Even mitigation strategies well beyond ones that can be imagined now would still leave the world warming for decades. As a result, thinking about the security implications of global warming means thinking about how groups, nations and institutions adapt to the fact of climate change. The climate dimension needs to be integral to all policy considerations from foreign aid, nation building and border controls, to food and energy security, technology transfer and trade policy, international law, and multilateral diplomacy. Not to recognise the climate angle behind a range of critical issues in security policy will put prospective policy actions at risk of failure. Acknowledgements The authors express their appreciation to Geoffrey Dabelko, Joshua Busby and General Richard Engel for their helpful comments on this article. Of course, any remaining errors are the fault of the authors alone. Notes The last two years seem to have witnessed a harmonic convergence of thoughtful analysts staking out climate change as a national-security issue. In April 2007 CNA Corporation released a high-visibility study on National Security and the Threat of Climate Change. November 2007 saw publication of both CSIS/CNAS's The Age of Consequences and the Council on Foreign Relations' Climate Change and National Security. Open sources have reported that the United States Intelligence Community has also plumbed this environment–security connection, recently conducting a large assessment of the nationalsecurity implications of climate change. ‘National Security Analyst Appraises Risks of Climate Change’, University of Delaware Daily, 16 May 2008; ‘New Intelligence Assessment Sizes Up National Security Implications of Climate Change’, Inside Defense Newsstand, 18 June 2008; House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence/Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, Open Joint Hearing, 25 June 2008. These efforts, and others, were under-girded by the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's authoritative three-volume Fourth Assessment Report Climate Change 2007 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). For one provocative analysis of political and social impacts, see Nils Gilman, Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, Impacts of Climate Change: A System Vulnerability Approach to Consider the Potential Impacts to 2050 of a Mid-Upper Greenhouse Gas Emissions Scenario (San Francisco, CA: Global Business Network, March 2007), available at http://www.gbn.com/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=39932. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Summary for Policymakers, pp. 11–12. Testimony, Dan Kimball, House Appropriations Committee, Washington DC, 26 April 2007. IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, p. 331. As is already happening in the St John's River in Jacksonville, Florida, hometown of one of the authors. Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Select U.S. Security Interests, Module 2: Country-Level Exposure to Potential Sea-Level Rise, Report Prepared by Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University for the National Intelligence Council, 19 October 2007. Data available at http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/gpw/lecz.jsp. Thomas R. Karl et al., eds, Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate. Regions of Focus: North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and U.S. Pacific Islands, U.S. Climate Change Science Program and Subcommittee on Global Change Research, Synthesis and Assessment Product 3.3, June 2008. Not discussed here is the impact of warming on drying ground cover and lengthening fire seasons, a problem to which Californians and Australians can attest. ‘U.S. 2008 Tornado Death Toll 58% Above Average’, Daily Green, 5 May 2008. For an excellent delineation of climate change as a security issue, see Joshua Busby, ‘Who Cares about the Weather? Climate Change and National Security’, Security Studies, vol. 17, no. 3, July 2008, pp. 468–504. ‘U.S. Midwest Farmland Flooding Boosts Food Prices’, Reuters, 18 June 2008. CIESIN, Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Select U.S. Security Interests, Module 3: Water Scarcity, 20 November 2007, www.ciesin.columbia.edu/documents/Climate_Security_CIESIN_July_2008_v1_0.ed70208.pdf. See, for example, Aleksandr Khramchikhin, ‘The Chinese Bicycle’, Novy Mir, 15 March 2008. Laurie Garrett, ‘Food Failures and Futures’, Council on Foreign Relations, 15 May 2008. Idea conveyed by Michael Malley, Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School. Fred Iklé and Lowell Wood, ‘Climatic Engineering’, National Interest, no. 93, January–February 2008, pp. 18–24. Additional informationNotes on contributorsPaul F. Herman Paul F. Herman Jr is Program Director, Transnational Issues, National Intelligence Council Long-Range Analysis Unit. The views expressed herein are his and not necessarily those of the NIC or the US government. Gregory F. Treverton Gregory F. Treverton is Director of the RAND Corporation's Center for Global Risk and Security. His most recent book is Intelligence for an Era of Terror (forthcoming).
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-03-24
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 8
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