Over on Danger Room, Noah Shachtman wonders whether climate change is a military issue. Seems the Defense Authorization Bill that just passed in the House "includes a requirement for future defense planning to include consideration of the risks posed by global warming to current and future Department of Defense facilities, capabilities, and missions," according to a statement from Rep. Ed Markey's office. The bill requires that global warming impacts be assessed and accounted for in future versions of the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and the Quadrennial Defense Review.
But it shouldn't be any surprise that the military is going to have to start taking climate change into account. Back in April, a group of retired generals and admirals released a 63-page report on the security threats posed by the resource strain and migration likely to happen should global temperatures continue to rise. The day after that report was issued, the U.N. Security Council held its first-ever briefing on climate change, which focused on conflicts that could arise in politically unstable regions of Asia and Africa. Their report concluded that the climate change could become an "incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," and that the United States "must become a more constructive partner" with the rest of the world.
All of this just makes it even more frustrating that Senate Republicans can't manage to raise taxes on the oil industry to or agree that we should move toward drawing 15 percent of our electricity from renewable sources, pretty much the bare minimum in attempts to curb climate change. What happened to Republican reverence for the military?
--Kate Sheppard
