Analyzing the Climate Security Threat: Key Actions for the U.S. Intelligence Community

[rangerrebew]

Analyzing the Climate Security Threat: Key Actions for the U.S. Intelligence Community
Erin Sikorsky
January 22, 2021
 

President Joe Biden’s national security adviser has called climate change an urgent national security priority. Yet, as the person who recently led climate analysis across the U.S. intelligence community, I speak from experience when I say U.S. intelligence agencies are not treating it like one. The House Intelligence Committee agrees, noting in a report from September 2020, “the intelligence community places insufficient emphasis on … interconnected long-term national security threats, such as infectious diseases of pandemic potential and climate change.”

 
During my time on the National Intelligence Council from 2017 to 2020, I saw this all too often. Existing intelligence structures are organized around regions, state actors and, in the wake of 9/11, tactical threats. Actorless, borderless risks like climate change too often fall through the cracks and receive fewer resources than the so-called “hard” security threats — terrorism, great power competition, and nuclear proliferation — that are considered more important. Yet, as the House Intelligence Committee report pointed out, and as the COVID-19 crisis has unfortunately taught us, in today’s world the distinction between supposedly “hard” and “soft” security issues no longer makes sense. One cannot analyze U.S. competition with China and Russia without examining how climate change will affect their food and water supplies, coastal cities, energy demands, or health security. Similarly, one cannot forecast the likelihood of conflict in fragile states without exploring how climate change contributes to instability, nor can one understand extremist trajectories without digging into how the opportunity cost of joining terrorist groups is lowered when the effects of climate change eliminate the ability to make a livelihood from farming, for example. Indeed, these issues are not “soft” at all — they have real and wide-ranging “hard” security implications.

https://warontherocks.com/2021/01/analyzing-the-climate-security-threat-key-actions-for-the-u-s-intelligence-community/

[rangerrebew]

Is it "climate change" or "global warming?"  To say climate change is to say the rain this month isn't as wet as last month.  Doesn't make  sense? It is a given water is wet as it is climate changes and people have known this for thousands of years.  So what is the big deal about "climate change" all of a sudden.  Military planners have tried to account for it as long as they have known of weather variability.  A good example of "climate change" is the battle of Normandy which was delayed a day from it's scheduled launch because of bad weather ("climate change") and the allies having better forecasts than the Germans.