Ethics

Pentagon Doesn't Doubt Global Warming

By Ed Brayton

The Bush administration may have spent the last 8 years denying global warming, but the war planners at the Pentagon haven't been ignoring the reality of the situation. They understand that global warming will cause significant dislocations in access to resources and therefore could cause a variety of security problems.

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on August 15, 2009 (boomark / email).