One of the country's top spies came to Capitol Hill today, to warn Congress that global climate change could sap the country's military forces -- while fueling new conflicts around the world. But he warned that responding to global warming might be even more costly than the problem itself.
"As climate changes spur more humanitarian emergencies... [t]he United States, in particular will be called upon to respond," National Intelligence Council chairman Thomas Fingar told a joint session of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and the Intelligence Community Management Subcommittee. And those demands "may significantly tax US military... readiness."
"Climate change will have wide-ranging implications for US national security interests over the next 20 years," Fingar noted, as he presented an open summary of a classified National Intelligence Assessment on the effects of global warming. But the biggest impact is likely to be overseas, where "climate change... will worsen existing problems — such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions. [That] could threaten domestic stability in some states, potentially contributing to intra- or, less likely, interstate conflict, particularly over access to increasingly scarce water resources." America will almost invariably have to cope with the consequences.
But the U.S. will also have to deal with the impact of global warming at home, Fingar said.
And while the United States copes with all of that, the country "will need to anticipate and plan for growing immigration pressures. Although sea level rise is probably a slow and long-term development, extreme weather events and growing evidence of inundation will motivate many to move sooner rather than later."
Fingar warned, however, that the cure for global warming might be worse than the proverbial disease. "Government, business, and public efforts to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies to deal with climate change — from policies to reduce greenhouse gasses to plans to reduce exposure to climate change or capitalize on potential impacts —
may affect US national security interests even more than the physical impacts of climate change itself," he said.
Those sentiments were echoed by Marlo Lewis, with the energy industry-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute. "There are also risks associated with global warming policy," Lewis said. By taking money out of people's wallets, for example, a gas tax increase
"could inadvertently contribute to poor health and premature death."
Climate change may also "create common interests among countries as well as competition," noted Dr. Kent Hughes
Butts, with the Army War College. The Chinese and American economies both get essential resources from the Middle East and Africa, the two regions likely to feel the greatest effects of global warming. So China and the U.S. "share a common interest in maintaining stability and ensuring dependable access at reasonable prices."
But Butts also warned that climate change could make those regions more fertile ground for terrorists.
