All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change by Michael T. Klare

Author:Michael T. Klare
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, Environmental Policy, Global Warming & Climate Change, Industries, Military Policy, Natural Resource Extraction, Political Science, Public Policy, United States
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Published: 2019-11-12T03:00:00+00:00

RISING TEMPERATURES, BIGGER STORMS, AND GROWING PENTAGON INVOLVEMENT

Ever since U.S. military and intelligence officials began pondering the impact of climate change on American national security, they have consistently assumed that the homeland would, in time, experience the same sort of punishing impacts from warming that they were witnessing in other countries around the world. The United States, they fully understand, is highly vulnerable to sea-level rise and extreme storm events on its Atlantic and Gulf coasts and to prolonged drought and recurring wildfires in its western states. While they also recognize that the United States is better prepared to cope with such challenges than less-fortunate nations in the developing world, they have never assumed that it is immune to severe shocks. And they presume that, as warming’s impacts on the homeland become more frequent and severe, the armed forces will be called upon with ever greater frequency to assist local authorities in the aftermath of disasters.

For senior Pentagon officers, such a situation is the stuff of nightmares. In modern times, the American military has largely been configured as a “forward-deployed” organization, trained and equipped to counter the nation’s adversaries where they reside, rather than at America’s borders. Since the end of World War II, this has meant the deployment of hundreds of thousands of sailors, soldiers, Marines, and Air Force personnel on widely dispersed ships or at bases in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere, allowing them to attack and defeat enemy combatants on their home turf. But when all is said and done, the ultimate responsibility of America’s armed forces is to defend the homeland, and it would be inconceivable for senior commanders to turn down a request for help from besieged states and communities under assault from invasive forces as powerful as Harvey, Irma, and Maria. As storms of this magnitude become more common, therefore, the Pentagon could reach a point where requests for disaster relief and reconstruction at home consume such a large share of the military’s assets and personnel that they imperil its ability to sustain an invincible forward presence abroad.

The triple punch of Harvey, Irma, and Maria made the nightmare palpable. It may be some time before scientists can determine exactly how much global warming contributed to the severity of the three hurricanes, but there is no question that climatic conditions before and during these storms were highly unusual—and can be explained only through reference to global warming. Hurricanes draw their destructive energy from the oceans’ warm waters, and the months leading up to the emergence of Harvey and its two powerful successors saw a pronounced increase in water temperatures in hurricane-breeding areas of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.21 Sea surface temperatures in the eastern Atlantic, where most hurricanes arise, were between 0.5 and 1.0 degree Celsius (0.9 to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above average during the summer of 2017, an increase great enough to add substantial energy to any storms developing in the area.22 Sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were also running substantially above average for that time of year, by as much as 1.

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