Erik Loomis points to a Financial Times op-ed by John Podesta and Peter Ogden on the military response to climate change:
In the run-up to the United Nations climate change conference in Bali, business people implored political leaders to take bold steps to combat global warming. They insisted that their ability to undertake effective long-term planning was undermined by uncertainty about the future cost of carbon emissions. Yet their calls for action were ignored.Ogden and Podesta lay out five implications that climate change could have for military operations, including a more failed states, more natural disasters, adverse weather, threats to established bases, and potential manpower shortages. Loomis wonders about one of the basic assumptions behind the op-ed: Will there be political will in the United States to continue to play the role of the hegemon in disaster and failed state situations if the United States itself is suffering from climate change related difficulties?Perhaps the outcome would have been different if the world's single largest organisation -- the Pentagon -- had joined the chorus. After all, it also needs to know what kind of environment to prepare for to allocate its vast resources efficiently.
Having participated in a few of the sessions that eventually led to the new Maritime Strategy, I can report that considerations such as peak oil and global warming were taken seriously, if not necessarily prioritized. All of the services have certainly given some thought to the possibility of energy shortages. I think it should also be noted that the process of such theorizing within the military and civilian defense establishment will benefit immensely from the election of a president who is not George W. Bush. In any case, to the extent that we want the role of the military in United States foreign policy to be about management of crises (such as disasters and failed states), taking seriously the problems presented by climate change is absolutely critical to planning. But of course, as Loomis notes, this also involves certain assumptions about the hegemonic role of the United States in the international system.
--Robert Farley
