Armed Forces Community Takes Up Global Warming Cause: It's an Ugrent Matter of National Security

By Bill Becker, Climate Progress. Posted May 18, 2009.

If members of the U.S. Congress listen closely today, they will hear this sound.

That's the cavalry (and the Navy, Air Force and Marines) coming to the aid of the green army that is so vastly outnumbered and out-funded by the oil and coal lobbyists on Capitol Hill.

A panel of 12 distinguished retired generals and admirals has just released the latest in a series of reports over the past two years warning that global climate change is not just an environmental issue, or an economic issue, or a public health and welfare issue. It's an urgent matter of national security.

Put another way, any effort to further delay the world's transition to a sustainable energy economy or to launch an aggressive response to global climate change is a national security threat.

The new report — "Powering America's Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security" -- is the work of the Military Advisory Board of the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA), a federally funded research and development center serving U.S. defense agencies. The Board consists of former admirals and generals who have served at the very top of America's military structure and who know a security threat when they see one. (See their names and titles at the end of this post).

Among their conclusions: 

• Our current energy posture causes military, diplomatic and economic vulnerabilities that are "exploitable by those who wish to do us harm."

• A business as usual approach to energy security poses a "unacceptably high threat level from a series of converging risks";

• We should not pursue energy options "inconsistent with the national response to climate change" -- in other words, fossil fuels, whether they are produced domestically or by other nations.

The 12 retired officers make clear that imported oil is not our only security problem. Coal and gas are liabilities, too, as are other fossil derivatives such as liquids from coal:

Diversifying our energy sources and moving away from fossil fuels where possible is critical to our future energy security…

The volatile fossil fuel markets have a major impact on our national economy, which in turn affects national security…Volatility is not limited to the oil market; the nation's economy is also wrenched by the increasingly sharp swings in the price of natural gas and coal. This volatility wreaks havoc with government revenue projections, making the task of addressing strategic and systemic national security problems much more challenging. It also makes it more difficult for companies to commit to the long-term investments needed to develop and deploy new energy technologies and upgrade major infrastructure…

Replacing one limited fuel source with another will not give Americans the lasting security they expect and deserve.

"We have less than ten years to change or fossil fuel dependency course in significant ways," concludes one of the officers, Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, the former Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Requirements and Programs. "Our nation's security depends on the swift, serious and thoughtful response to the inter-linked challenges of energy security and climate change. Our elected leaders and, most importantly, the American people should realize this set of challenges isn't going way. We cannot continue business as usual."

As I noted earlier, this is only the latest warning from former military leaders that our dependence on carbon-intensive fossil fuels is making us less and less safe.

April 2007: The CNA issued a study by 11 retired admirals and generals that focused specifically on the national security implications of climate change. Among their conclusions:

Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the United States…The increasing risks from climate change should be addressed now because they will almost certainly get worse if we delay.

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