Collide-a-scape

The Economist, in a rather one-sided article, is dubious about the increasingly touted link between climate change and human conflict. It’s true that the “climate wars” narrative is starting to take on a life of its own. I’ve even used the term as a headline in a post. But it’s also obvious (from the comment thread in that post) that environmental security experts are careful not to make direct links between climate change and war. Rather, what they often say is that climate change represents a “threat multiplier” in geopolitical hot spots, where a marginal environment, resource conflict and chronic state instability are already the norm.

That said, there is this recent video montage of U.S. generals and admirals expressing their deep concerns about climate change. Additionally, there is a whole other set of geopolitical issues that are now being seen through the climate security lens.

The Economist article signals that the broader assertions of climate-triggered conflict are about to be scrutinized more closely. In that sense, environmental security experts and military brass who warn about global warming ought to be prepared for the kinds of tough questions that climate scientists are routinely asked about their projections.

That brings us back to the elephant in the room: Uncertainty. In a previous thread on this blog, one commenter who works in intelligence talked about how the issue of uncertainty figures into policy debates on various national security threats. He saw interesting parallels to the climate policy debate. In an email, I asked “Andy” to elaborate on these similarities and also to comment on the video of military professionals expressing their concerns about climate change. After providing some of his background, “Andy” offers a perspective that I hope triggers a productive discussion on the intersection between risk, policy, and cost/benefit considerations.

*****

My experience is military intelligence – I’ve never worked for a civilian agency, though I’ve spent time working with people that do, obviously.  My current job involves unmanned aerial vehicles (predator and reaper mainly) in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I’ve been in the intelligence business for almost 20 years and my expertise is intelligence support to military forces, contingency planning and strategic warning.

The video montage is interesting. They are doing what military and intelligence people do – they see a potential threat which stimulates their institutional desire to contingency plan for that threat.  They see the scope of the threat and potential impacts are still uncertain but real enough to cause genuine concern.  One shouldn’t interpret this as a call-to-action for one’s preferred ideological solution. It’s actually a call for more analysis – not analysis of the science (which is outside their expertise) – but analysis of what can and should be done to address the problem.  The process for this in national security is contingency planning and to me, that is the key concept that I take away from the video, even though it’s not explicitly stated.

Good contingency planning doesn’t rely on fixed assumptions because plans made under today’s assumptions are likely to fail when they meet tomorrow’s reality. Rarely do our assumptions hold true over time.   Therefore we need a holistic and flexible approach which considers a variety of assumptions.  We need to consider resource allocation on a continuum and prioritize the potential threat of climate change under a variety of assumptions vs other potential and not-so-potential threats, interests and values.  We can’t afford to put all our eggs in one basket.

The military, for example, aspires to have a “full spectrum” force that can deal with humanitarian crises, high-intensity conventional warfare and everything in between.  Part of that includes planning for both likely and unlikely scenarios.  As a result the military is rarely fully-prepared for any one contingency, but is usually “prepared enough” for a wide range of contingencies.  That method of dealing with uncertainty has proven itself over time.  I personally believe (and this is probably the result of my own professional bias) that we need to prepare for climate change in a similar “full spectrum” manner, at least until there is sufficient political consensus to focus efforts in one area.

What is politically possible also needs to be considered simply because political structures (governments in this case) usually aren’t willing to suffer high opportunity costs unless the solution is a sure thing.  I think those who are predisposed to certain policy solutions need to keep that in mind – particularly those at the CAGW end of the spectrum.  From my armchair I think a lot of those advocates are shooting themselves in the foot.  Litmus tests regarding what is appropriate skepticism, for example, are not likely to generate the political support necessary to enable the policy you want – quite the opposite actually.  You’ll get high-fives from supporters and alienation from everyone else.  In order to achieve policy action on the scale you believe is required, you need to make the tent bigger, not smaller.  So it seems to me you are thinking tactically and not strategically – maybe you win some battles, but you risk losing the war.  Just something to think about.

One thing to keep in mind about senior military officers and national security people is that they are a parochial bunch who usually have bureaucratic interest in mind.  Despite all the intelligence reforms after 9/11, parochial interest still reigns and all the various agencies both cooperate and compete.  As our federal budget increasingly comes under intense pressure, you’re going to see a lot of people try to keep their organizations away from the budget ax by taking on new “threats.”  Climate change therefore represents an opportunity for parochialism that can’t be completely ignored when assessing the views of senior officials with budgetary skin in the game.  That’s a sad indictment of my own organization and profession, but I’ve seen it all too often to believe it will be any different regarding climate change.

Returning to the national security aspect of climate change for a minute, I think the focus will primarily be on consequence management because of the policy tools we have in the greater policy toolbox.  We are not equipped to deal with, for example, a carbon-reduction strategy.  The US military, in particular, has unique capabilities to quickly react to problems overseas – see the recent disaster in Haiti, for example.  Since our toolbox is limited and since we inevitably have our institutional parochialism, I doubt you will see many national security folks argue for a carbon reduction strategy if that will negatively impact their parochial interests (ie. budgets) – in other words, the military and national security bureaucracy will, in my judgment, tend to favor consequence management policies over carbon reduction.

Finally, one reason that I’ve become so interested in climate change is because it is very similar in character (but not content) to traditional national security problems.  I mentioned a few such problems in my earlier comment and I’ll focus on one here – nuclear terrorism.  Currently, this is deemed the preeminent threat to US national security (see here for a summary). This is a threat that’s difficult to quantify in terms of probabilities and there is a wide range of opinion on how to deal with it.  There are “denialists” who think it’s not much of a problem at all –so unlikely as to be irrelevant and thus requiring no policy change.  At the other end of the spectrum are those who think it’s only a matter of time before a US city gets nuked unless we take bold and decisive action now.  Does that dichotomy sound familiar?  Of course there is a middle-ground where we take reasonable, cost-effective measures to reduce the threat (increased security, better controls of nuclear material, better intelligence and detection), create and maintain capabilities to deal with the consequences should the threat materialize (response teams, medical and decontamination capabilities, etc.)  and work on a long-term solution to the problem (reduction/elimination of nuclear weapons, more limits and oversight of nuclear activities internationally, etc.).  Not coincidentally, those cost-effective measures have positive secondary effects in other areas.

Iran’s nuclear program is another example.  There are many uncertainties regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions and capabilities.  Even if we assume the worst, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the sure-fire remedy – toppling the government through military force – would be the wisest option.  Actions have consequences and before formulating policy we need to be reasonably sure the cure won’t be worse than the disease.

In short, I see a lot of wishful thinking on both sides of the climate change debate rooted in unrealistic and unachievable policy preferences.  I can’t definitively speak to intentions, but my sense is that many people begin with a policy preference borne out of tribal ideology instead of thoroughly examining the problem in all its complexity. In my opinion, what we need is serious policy analysis that examine costs, benefits and risks and we need to create plans that include a variety of actions flowing from a variety of assumptions instead of considering only the policy we are predisposed to.

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What do you think of the framework Andy proposes for addressing the vexing issues of uncertainty, security threats and cost-benefit considerations?

Guess who’s asking the hard questions on climate science and policy. The U.S. military and geopolitical/security specialists.

Earlier this week, an array of of defense, national security and climate experts took part in a conference hosted by the Scripps Oceanography Center for Environment and National Security. This was the symposium agenda and here’s the opener from a story by Lauren Morello:

Tell us what you don’t know.

That’s the message military and national security experts gathered here want to send to climate scientists.

This follows on the heels of a panel event held earlier this month by the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change Security program. That discussion, between environmental security scholars and policy experts, explored

the unintended security consequences of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.

The conversation there appears to have centered on the complicated interplay between energy policy, food security, environmental conservation and geopolitical concerns, among other things. Here’s a nice overview of the specific issues covered, and this summation:

The panelists stressed that taking actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change is necessary, but that we must evaluate the full range of potential effects of these strategies. “We need to blow open the box on how complicated these problems are,” [Cleo] Paskal said. “We need as many different people involved and as many different sorts of solutions as possible.”

Paskal is a climate security scholar, whose recent book Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises will Redraw the World Map, I reviewed several months ago for Nature.  (I have a longstanding interest in the environment/security nexus; here’s an exchange with experts and a related interview I conducted recently on this blog.)

To me, the calls for better forecasting and additional voices and options at the climate policy table is a good thing. In some popular quarters of the blogosphere, though, where climate change is of paramount concern (and political calculations are always present), this plea for more information by military and security experts is likely to be considered “unhelpful.” Heck, on one influential blog, raising such nettlesome issues that draws undue attention to any limitations of climate science and a preferred policy prescription, is liable to get you pegged as an “anti-science, climate disinformer/delayer.”

One of the catch-phrases President Obama didn’t use in his much parsed Oval Office speech on Tuesday was energy security. He did, however, make a glancing, split-second reference when discussing the costs associated with a transition from fossil fuels to a clean energy economy (emphasis added):

And there are some who believe that we can’t afford those costs right now. I say we can’t afford not to change how we produce and use energy -– because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater.

Obama’s reluctance to mention energy security in his speech strikes me as odd, considering how the term has become a central plank in his Administration’s energy policy and also a popular new Democratic talking point, which Michael Levi, an energy expert, notes in this recent Foreign Policy piece:

That two-word phrase — “energy security” — is an idea invoked frequently by everyone from oil company executives to green-energy proponents, and one that has taken center stage in the United States since the Gulf spill. Last week, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar cited energy security in explaining the need to continue drilling in the outer continental shelf. Senators John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman have argued that their new clean energy and climate bill will help the United States achieve energy security. Obama’s new National Security Strategy, published last month, invokes energy security no fewer than four times.

That Obama didn’t talk about energy security in his Oval Office address perhaps owes to the main point of Levi’s FP article, which is reflected in the subhead:

Politicians, oilmen, and green-energy boosters love to invoke the idea of energy security. None of them know what they’re talking about.

Levi includes himself in this clueless category. Earlier this week on his own blog at the Council on Foreign Relations, he wrote:

The phrase “energy security” is on my business card, yet whenever anyone uses it, I scratch my head.

I admire this humble tone from an energy scholar. Levi’s forthright attitude echoes the refreshing openness that a number of leading environmental security experts exhibited on this site during an excellent thread on the equally squishy climate security term.

The issue of climate security, which a number of experts discussed on this thread, is gaining prominence in U.S. policy and political circles. But as I wrote in this story last November, “a sense of urgency has been building in military and intelligence circles around the world” too. Climate security has also leaped to the top of think tank agendas in the U.S. (see here, here, and here) and in the U.K., where Jeffrey Mazo studies the security and policy implications of climate change at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Mazo has just published a book, Climate Conflict: How global warming threatens security and what to do about it. In the introduction, he writes:

The scientific evidence leaves no doubt that the climate is changing in response to global warming. In the past, climate change has affected the stability of societies, nations and civilisations, so the historically unprecedented change scientists are observing raises the spectre of increasing and accelerating social, geopolitical and economic disruption over the rest of this century and beyond.

Yesterday, I conducted a short Q & A with Mazo via email.

Q: In your new book, you devote a chapter to cases in prehistory where climate change contributed to a state’s downfall. You conclude:

It is clear that climate change does not always lead to contraction or collapse, and that contraction or collapse can occur in the absence of climate change. But climate cannot be ignored, since instances of climate change have challenged cultures throughout history. The way they met that challenge as much as the nature of the challenge itself provides a mirror for the security challenges posed by unprecedented warming we now face.

So is there one particular historical mirror that we should be looking into, one shining example of a society that successfully met the challenges posed by climate change?

JM: There really isn’t one shining example, since every circumstance is unique. It’s the common threads that run through widely varying examples that teach us valuable lessons. And, in a sense, it’s sort of the opposite of Tolstoy’s dictum that ‘happy families are all alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’.

Nations and cultures tend to fail in the face of climate change in similar ways, but the successes are all different. And it’s paired examples of different responses to the same circumstances like the Inuit and the Norse in medieval Greenland, or modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic, or drought in the American West in the 1800s, the 1930s and the 1950s, that are most revealing.

What they tell us is that the relative ability of different societies to adapt is the most important factor. In part that’s a question of what a society can afford to do, but most crucially it’s a question of whether a society or political system is flexible enough to make necessary changes, and fast enough, to cope with climate shocks.

We’re rich enough in the West, and in the industrialised world as a whole, to cope, at least in the medium term. Whether we’ve got the flexibility is another story. But in the short to medium term, it is the poorest and least developed countries that fall short on both grounds, and where we can expect security challenges to increase.

Q: In recent years Darfur has been held up as a cautionary tale of climate change and ethnic conflict. In a 2007 Washington Post op-ed, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon wrote:

Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change.

But some environmental security experts say it is oversimplistic and even historically inaccurate to blame the Darfur conflict on climate change or resource scarcity. In your book, you devote a chapter to Darfur. What’s your take on this?

JM: I think the disagreement among environmental security experts on this point is merely a difference of emphasis and perspective. The Darfur conflict was not caused by climate change, if you mean that climate change was both a necessary and a sufficient condition.

But in fact, in the case of Darfur, the further one gets from a simplistic, reductionist view of causality the more climate change (and probably greenhouse-induced climate change) is a critical factor underlying the violence. If we are asking ‘what caused the Darfur conflict’ (or any other conflict), this entails an examination of the relative contributions of different factors, and whether they are deterministic or predictive. There can be any number of equally valid answers, some of which have more relevance to finding solutions, or apportioning moral blame.

But if the question is whether climate change can cause (or contribute to conflict), Darfur can be readily adduced as evidence. To say that other factors were equally, or even more, important politically or morally is not to deny that Darfur was in this particular sense a climate-change conflict. Ban Ki Moon’s interpretation of the causes of the Darfur fighting was in fact more nuanced than some critics have given him credit for.

Q: Given how difficult it is to disentangle political, cultural, and environemntal factors, how can we best assess climate change as a legitimate security issue?

JM: I think there are two ways to answer this. One is to look at the long-term, dangerous, even potential catastrophic impacts of climate change as an existential security threat that justifies the sorts of actions outside the security sphere that will be necessary to avoid those impacts. In other words, we need to avoid the security threat, so we need to mitigate emissions and move to a low carbon economy as quickly as possible.

This is something I don’t really look at in my book, which focuses on the short to medium term. Over the next thirty years or so, which is the usual horizon for defence and security planning, the impacts will, as you say, be difficult to disentangle from political and cultural factors, especially given the relatively modest degree of climate change we expect over this period.

In the medium term the trend will be more ‘more of the same’–an incremental, quantitative change in things like civil unrest, violence and civil wars – rather than qualitatively new threats like resource wars and maritime border changes (from sea level rise) and land border changes, from melting glaciers. And though we can be confident that the security threats will increase in the aggregate, precisely where and when they will manifest is impossible to predict.

UPDATE: Be sure to check out the comment thread, where a number of top environmental security experts weigh in.

I bet you you think this is going to be a continuation of last week’s discussion. Nah.

This week, I’ll be talking to scholars and experts who study the linkages between climate change, energy, and security. The shorthand for that nexus is climate security or energy security. Or, put another way: global warming = war.

In 2007, think tanks were just starting to define the climate/energy/security nexus. In 2008, intelligence experts sounded the alarm. In 2009, the CIA opened a climate change shop. Earlier this year, the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review declared:

Climate change and energy are two key issues that will play a significant role in shaping the future security environment.

These are important developments that deserve more attention. So far, public debate (which is minimal) seems to be shaped mostly by advocacy campaigns and political talking points.

In reality, the linkages between climate change, energy and national security are complex. Remember that impenetrable counterinsurgency powerpoint slide that recently bounced around the blogosphere? I bet there’s an equivalent one somewhere under lock and key that has a geopolitical diagram of the climate security threat.

What follows is a Q & A with two environmental security experts that seeks to clarify some of the core issues that have come to define climate security and energy security.

Geoff Dabelko is Director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, D.C. Cleo Paskal is an associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatam House, in London, and the author of the recent book, Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises will Redraw the World Map. (Disclosure: Several months ago, I reviewed Global Warring for Nature.)

Two questions for Geoff Dabelko:

Q: Last September you wrote in the journal Climatic Change that, “‘climate security’ is in danger of becoming merely a political argument that understates the complexity of climate’s security challenges.” This recent commercial by VoteVets.org seems to bear out your concern. What is the danger of oversimplifying the climate security issue for political reasons?

GD: Distilling complex topics into compelling sound bites demands (over)simplification and big leaps from problem to solution. But after grabbing people’s attention, what argument are you really making?

Careful analysis of climate and security linkages must inform advocacy efforts and policy responses. But we must realize that a wide range of players will interpret this analysis for their own ends.

Environmentalists should not use climate security just because it “polls well” or because military officers make effective communicators. In the 1990s, environmental security was proffered as the national security issue of the 21st century, but when that proved not to be the case, the blowback was fatal.

The security concerns related to climate and energy range well beyond typical climate advocacy goals. For example, the Pentagon is focused on clear tactical vulnerabilities such as IEDs targeting fuel re-supply missions, and strategic vulnerabilities, including dependence on unstable regimes for fuel. Both concerns have led DOD to prioritize fuel efficiency and alternative fuels, which can help reduce carbon emissions but are not direct arguments for passing a cap and trade scheme.

Similarly, climate change could act as a “threat multiplier” or “conflict accelerant” in regions of the world already destabilized by poverty, scarcity, and/or poor governance. While climate change may contribute to this instability, it should not be framed as a new type of conflict or a certain path to catastrophe.

For example, not all “climate migration” will be destabilizing or even negative. Migration has been a rational adaptation strategy in the past and will likely continue to be one in a warmer future. Yet advocates are often tempted to paint a picture of hundreds of millions of migrants flowing South to North. Such false precision in the face of tremendous uncertainty undercuts the legitimacy of the problem.

The bottom line: Climate change poses a range of security challenges, some of which must be met by security actors and others by civilians.  Those efforts must be based on precise analysis, even when fitting it on a bumper sticker.

Q: Energy security is a buzz phrase that has made its way into the political discourse. It’ll probably be invoked as a central plank of the U.S. Senate’s climate bill, whenever that is unveiled. How can the U.S. best achieve energy security?

GD: Energy security is not a new label but an enduring one that gained salience in the oil crises of the 1970s.  It is now surging past climate change as the political frame for the energy and climate efforts on the Hill and at the White House.

Energy security has unfortunately been conflated with the call to “end our dependence on foreign oil.”  While politically appealing, this slogan is practically impossible, given the nature of the global oil market, and probably undesirable and unnecessary–Canada, our friendly neighbor, is actually our largest supplier of oil.  The challenge is to channel the strong support for reducing trade with fragile or hostile suppliers into support for measures that increase efficiency, cut demand, and transition to alternative fuel sources.  Making these demand-side reductions–not just changing suppliers–is a key step to achieving energy security. It’s politically more difficult, but ultimately necessary.

We also need the software as well as the hardware. Achieving energy security requires an honest accounting of subsidies and regulatory incentives and disincentives for the full portfolio of existing and future energy technologies and sources.  Alternatives to fossil fuels remain at a tremendous disadvantage despite recent changes for the better.  Massive public and private investment in technologies must be accompanied by revolutions of equal importance in regulatory and behavior change arenas.

Energy security depends on addressing the current and future energy infrastructure vulnerabilities, including equipment failure, extreme weather events, long-term environmental change (i.e., sea-level rise/surges in the Gulf or pipelines built on thawing permafrost), regulatory inflexibility, and terrorist attacks.

Three questions for Cleo Paskal:

Q: What’s the big collision coming up at the intersection of climate change and U.S. national security?

CP: Environmental disruptions (caused by climate change but also other environmental change factors, such as depletion of groundwater) are increasingly threatening domestic U.S. security across the board, including economically, socially, politically and militarily.

Over the last year, Thomas Friedman has frequently promoted China’s green face to the world. Perhaps it’s time the esteemed NYT columnist and foreign policy specialist began paying attention to the other China, the one that’s been on a fossil fuel buying spree the past few years.

There’s even a nifty climate change angle for Friedman, should he take a look at China’s latest Canadian foray, confirmed this week: a $4.65 billion deal that gives China another sizable helping of Canada’s Oil Sands pie.

I can understand all the continuing interest in China’s green tech investment. What I don’t understand is why mainstream commentators pay little attention to China’s continuing procurement of dirty energy reserves around the world. Friedman’s blind spot seems especially curious given his focus on the nexus between national security and energy. And make no mistake, there are serious strategic implications, which some China watchers in DC have already noted.

Those implications are being considered this week by some Canadian pols, according to The Globe and the Mail:

China’s interest in Canada worries some Conservative MPs, who fear Beijing is out to put a lock on strategic resources. “If you buy both sides of the Panama Canal, it’s not just money,” observed Calgary Tory MP Rob Anders.

To which one Asian business official counters:

Nonsense, says Yuen Pau Woo, president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. The evidence shows China’s state-owned companies invest for commercial reasons, and vague fears of China’s rise are behind the opposition.

Oh really? I think this is a more accurate take, from Shi Yan, a Shanghai-based energy analyst:

The policy of energy security is fundamental to the overseas acquisitions by Chinese oil companies. China’s oil demand is increasing and domestic supplies cannot meet demand.

Like I said the other day, when some were touting the Iran/climate security angle, maybe it’s time people started paying more attention to China’s tangible pursuit of energy security.

UPDATE: Roger Pielke Jr. picks up on a different tar sands development, which highlights an important contradiction in American energy policy.

Experts who are grappling honestly with the national security/climate change nexus will wince when they see this post by the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson. It’s the kind of blatant political exploitation of recent headlines that some scholars warned about when the climate security meme was picked up prominently by mainstream media last summer.

Johnson, doing his best impersonation of a mid-2000s Thomas Friedman op-ed column, makes this argument:

If the world moves away from oil dependence, Iran’s regime will no longer be able to rely on petrodollars to stay afloat. Other unfriendly regimes propped up by carbon-fuel money, such as Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, will also feel the pinch, improving our national security and making it less likely our armed services will fight battles amid the oil fields. For that to happen, the United States must pass comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation as fast as possible, the stronger the better.

If the world moves away from oil dependence.  Brad, are you living in a CAP bubble? When you look at these projections, do you see that happening anytime soon? (By the way, those forecasts might be underestimated a wee bit.)  And what about China’s trajectory? And its willingness to do business with bad actors to meet its voracious energy needs?

If Iran’s nuclear ambitions are to be reigned in before they cause serious international trouble, it won’t be because of a carbon cap (which hardly seems around the corner), it’ll be because China will not want to upend the deepening energy relationship it has developed with Iran.

Now this initiative bears watching, because it gets beyond the fuzzy climate change cause-and-effect rhetoric. If adaptation is going to be done right in Africa–or anywhere–then this approach strikes me as a really smart way to go about it:

“It is not enough to say that Ethiopia is vulnerable,” says Joshua Busby, an assistant professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Also necessary is “which parts of Ethiopia are vulnerable and why.”

Kudos to The New Security Beat for the interview with Busby. Instead of focusing so much attention on climate politics (which I plead guilty to), we journalists should be paying greater heed to these kinds of efforts that are just getting underway.

Via the International Institute for Strategic Studies, this is a pretty interesting take on the recent Bin Laden/climate change episode:

Late last week, Osama Bin Laden came out with a new audiotape accusing the US for causing climate change.  He says: “Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury – the phenomenon is an actual fact.” The following statement could as easily have been spoken by Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, or other anti-capatalists:
One of the themes that ran through the Copenhagen Conference was the global divide between rich and poor, north and south.  As many studies have borne out, climate change will do greater harm to the poorest countries.  Because these countries also have the least responsibility for historical emissions, they feel they yet again being harmed by forces beyond their control.  This theme links climate change to a series of other grievances that the poor world holds against the rich, like agricultural protectionism, globalization, colonialism, and others.

What goes unmentioned in this post is how these grievances are likely to be magnified if future climate negotiations circumvent the UN, which is what may end up happening post Copenhagen. (Of course, developing countries such as China and India would be among the exclusive players, because they are among the world’s major emitters, but somehow I don’t think that’ll keep the world’s “poorest countries” from feeling dissed and doubly aggrieved.)

Regardless, for those of us who had trouble fathoming the purpose of Bin Laden’s opining on climate change, perhaps he was test driving a future AQ talking point against the West. This is what I think can be inferred from the last part of that International Institute for Strategic Studies post:

For the last several years, when analysts have discussed the security threats of climate change, we’ve talked about it “as an accelerant of instability or conflict” or as a new competition over scarce energy, water, or food resources.  Perhaps we should now begin to look at it as a new area of grievance between the rich and the poor.  If droughts in Sudan are blamed on global warming, and Sudanese blame the US for the emissions that caused global warming, then a logical next step would be for the Sudanese to engage in action that would cause the US to stop emitting.  Potential actions could include taking oil company workers hostage or even direct acts of terrorism.  A good way to defuse this animosity would be for the rich world to fully engage in a global climate treaty that is seen as fair, equitable, and just around the world.

Something to keep in mind if global climate talks get taken out of the UN framework.

Looks like Marc Morano is steering clear of the U.S. military’s acceptance of climate change.  You won’t find any big, bold headlines on Climate Depot about how the Pentagon is planning for a warmer world:

Climate change will affect DoD in two broad ways. First, climate change will shape the operating environment, roles, and missions that we undertake. The U.S. Global Change Research Program, composed of 13 federal agencies, reported in 2009 that climate-related changes are already being observed in every region of the world, including the United States and its coastal waters. Among these physical changes are increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the oceans and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt and alterations in river flows.

Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.

The seriousness with which the U.S. intelligence apparatus and the Pentagon take climate change is an inconvenient truth for Morano–and skeptics. As I’ve said before, it’s much easer to whack Al Gore or the IPCC than four star generals. The institutional acceptance of climate change by the U.S military is a hard thing to deal with over at Climate Depot. Much easier to ignore, right Marc? C’mon, surely, you can think up some headline about how the Pentagon has been bamboozled by the great global warming hoax?