Promise and Peril: National Securityand Climate Change

• Author: Inara Scott
• Pages: 199-212

199

Chapter 10

Promise and Peril: National

Security and Climate Change

Inara Scott

In increasingly direct langua ge, politicians, think tank s, government

agencies, and researchers have identied climate change as a threat

to national securit y. e 2014 Quad rennial Defense R eview, a pub-

lic document that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) relea sed to

describe c urrent U.S. m ilitar y policy, describes climate ch ange a s a “threat

multiplier” that can “enable terror ist activ ity and other forms of violence.”1

A 2014 report by t he Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) Military A dvisory

Board—the same organiz ation t hat original ly used t he term “threat mul-

tiplier” i n a 2007 report2—recently r aised the stakes, now c alling cli mate

change a “cat alyst for i nstability and conict.”3 Following these reports,

in October 2014, the Pentagon released its Climate Change Adaptation

Roadmap, which states, “Climate change will aect the Depart ment of

Defense’s ability to defend the Nation and poses immediate thre ats to U.S.

national security.”4

In his commencement address to the U.S. Coa st Guard Academy, Presi-

dent Barack Obama made his position clear:

I’m here today to say that climate cha nge constitutes a serious threat to global

security, an immed iate risk to our national secur ity, and make no m istake, it

1. U.S. DOD, Q D R 2014 at 8 (2014), available at http://www.defense.gov/

pubs/2014_Quadrennial_Defense_Review.pdf [hereinafter Q D R].

2. CNA M A B, N S   T  C C 7

(2007), available at http://www.npr.org/documents/2007/apr/security_climate.pdf.

3. CNA M A B, N S   A R  C

C 2 (2014), at https://www.cna.org/sites/de fault/les/MAB_2014.pdf [hereinafter CN A

R]. “‘In the past, the thinking was that climate change multiplied the signica nce of a situ-

ation,’ said Gen. Charles F. Wald, who contributed to both reports and is retired from t he Air

Force. ‘Now we’re saying it’s going to be a direct ca use of instability.’” Coral Davenport , Climate

Change Dee med Growing Sec urity reat by Military Researchers, N.Y. T, May 14, 2014, at

A18.

4. U.S. DOD, FY 2014 C C A R 1 (2014), available at http://www.

acq.osd.mil /ie/download/CCAR print_wForeword_c.pdf [hereinafter C C A-

 R ].