November 12, 2012 1:12 pm
Report: Climate Change Threatens National Security
Petty Officer 2nd Class John Dicola helps clean up in the wake of the March 2011 Japan tsunami. Photo: U.S. Navy by Petty Officer 2nd Class Devon Dow
In the wake of hurricane Sandy’s devastating landfall on the northeast coast, nearly 4,000 National Guard soldiers moved throughout New York City to help spread supplies, to look for victims and to help keep the peace. By destroying homes, cutting power and limiting fuel supplies, natural disasters have a way of setting the stage for potential volatility—an effect that could be amplified in less-supported parts of the world. Climate disasters bring destruction, destruction brings volatility and volatility can bring instability. It is this train of thought that led the National Research Council, in a study commissioned by the U.S. intelligence community, to suggest that climate change will place “unparalleled strains on American military and intelligence agencies in coming years” says The New York Times.
Along with an increasing likelihood of damage from natural disasters such as Sandy, climate change is expected to bring an ice-free Arctic ocean, rising sea levels, and shifting patterns of rain and drought around the world. According to The Guardian,
The Pentagon already ranks climate change as a national security threat, putting US troops in danger around the world and adding fuel to existing conflicts. More than 30 US bases are threatened by sea level rise.
The Times:
Climate-driven crises could lead to internal instability or international conflict and might force the United States to provide humanitarian assistance or, in some cases, military force to protect vital energy, economic or other interests, the study said.
The report has seemingly impeccable timing. A new poll from the Rasmussen Reports has found that 68% of U.S. adults rate climate change as a serious problem, with the bulk of those considering it to be “very serious.”
The news that climate change will be a challenge for the military isn’t exactly news to the military. For years, the Navy’s department of Energy, Environment and Climate Change has been pushing towards their so-called “Green Fleet.”
“Nonetheless,” says the Times, “the 206-page study warns in sometimes bureaucratic language, the United States is ill prepared to assess and prepare for the catastrophes that a heated planet will produce.”
More from Smithsonian.com:
Navy’s Plan To Go Green Is Falling Apart
As Global Food Prices Climb, So Does the Probability of Riots
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The idea of unlimited growth by almost all the countries of the globe must be questioned on two grounds; the availability of basic resources and also the capacity of the environment to cope with abuse by human beings. Both are strictly limited. So much for the physical-material-aspects of the matter, let us now turn to certain non-material aspects. Modern economic systems are driven by limitless greed and envy. But can these forces be effective for long, or do they carry within themselves the seeds of destruction?
Economic progress is possible only through the powerful impulses of greed and selfishness, which religion and traditional wisdom ask us to resist. Modern economic systems are driven by limitless greed and envy. But can these forces be effective for long, or do they carry within themselves of destruction?
If human vices such as greed and envy are systematically cultivated, the result is nothing less than a collapse of intelligence. A man driven by greed and envy can not see things as they really are, in their roundness and wholeness; his very successes become his failures.
The foundations of peace can not be laid by universal prosperity because such prosperity, if feasible at all, can be attained only by cultivating the forces of greed and envy, which destroy intelligence, happiness and serenity and thereby the peaceful instincts of man. The rich can become richer only by continuing to make intolerable demands on limited world resources.
The economic wisdom requires a total re-orientation of science and technology. Scientific or technological ‘solutions’ which poison the environment or degrade society or the individual are of no benefit. Ever bigger machines, ever bigger concentrations of economic power, causing ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science towards the organic, the gentle, the simple, the elegant and beautiful, instead of using our technology to create machines which churn out more and more goods to satisfy our ever-increasing wants and destroy our beautiful earth, we must try to bring about a revolution in technology which will reverse the present trend towards destruction.
The wise men of the globe, such as Buddha, Christ and Gandhi, have long preached the virtue of modernization in all things, or renunciation and sacrifice. Today, when the globe is threatened by the very technology that we have created in our thirst for wealth, we need modernization more than ever before. The desire for unlimited growth must cease, for in the long run, simple living and high thinking is better.
Comment by Dasarathi Bhuyan — November 15, 2012 @ 12:33 am