The Pentagon declares climate change a national security threat …
“Climate changes does pose a threat to millions of people around the world,” says Sherri Goodman, who knows a thing or two about the connection between climate change and national security. She helped the Pentagon shape policies to respond to global warming while serving as a deputy undersecretary of Defense for environmental-security during the Clinton administration.
Goodman told the Weather Channel earlier this year that the military was by then already working on responses to the threat.
“We were aware very much during the 1990s that climate change was going to have an impact on military operations,” she said.
Goodman also has served in top-level positions at CNA Corporation, a research non-profit that provides analysis for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps and national security agencies. She’s now president and C-E-O of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, which represents top public and private ocean-research educational institutions.
“We see climate change acting as a threat multiplier in the Arctic,” she said.
So Goodman was glad to see the Defense Department’s latest report issued in July outlining threats to the nation from record-setting drought, heat and storms. And that it included a section on the Arctic.
“There’s been a recognition for some time now about the national-security implications of climate change,” she added. “Nowhere is that more clear than in the Arctic.”
That Arctic portion of the report mainly focused on the need for improved search-and-rescue capability to respond to increased offshore resource development, shipping and military activity in the region, due to the melting and northward retreat of sea ice that’ll leave open water.
'There's development in Congress now, on both sides of the aisle, for recognition that climate change is a national security concern that needs to be addressed as a unified front.'
“There’s greater awareness now of the need to address the changing arctic – and the need to have presence in the Arctic as those conditions change,” she said.
Goodman says that awareness is shown by this summer’s visits to Alaska by President Obama, and by the United States assuming chairmanship of the Arctic Council.
“There’s development in Congress now, on both sides of the aisle, for recognition that climate change is a national security concern that needs to be addressed as a unified front.”
Goodman says she’s not sure if there’s enough bipartisan support yet to appropriate enough money for more heavy icebreakers, each of which costs about a billion dollars.
