Climate change seen as “security threat” by UN Security Council, US military experts

Canadian Dimension / Articles / Climate change seen as "security threat" by UN Security Council, US military experts

 

On April 17, the United Nations Security Council held its first-ever discussion on climate change as a serious threat to security and future political stability. In addition to the 15 council member states in attendance, 38 other UN member countries sent representatives to speak. Although no action was taken at the meeting's conclusion, its very convocation reveals growing uneasiness within the world's ruling powers about social unrest that would come with global warming.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, president of the Security Council, introduced the topic with the warning, "The Security Council is the forum to discuss issues that threaten the peace and security of the international community. What makes wars start? Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use," she said. "There are few greater potential threats to our economies … but also to peace and security itself."

Citing the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) findings, Beckett outlined the potential for increased famines, floods, and disease outbreaks leading to mass migration; increased competition over food, arable land, water, and energy; and profound economic crises.

The widely accepted scientific projections are grave. The poorest populations will suffer earliest and worst. Many are already struggling to cope with extreme climates with little governmental support. Populations in the Indian subcontinent, China, and the Andes region of South America are particularly vulnerable to the melting of glaciers that serve as regional water supplies. Such melting will result in increased flooding, and, ultimately, extreme water shortages. Declining crop yields across the already hot and dry African continent could leave hundreds of millions without the means to produce food. Coastal populations throughout Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Pacific, as well as in large cities such as New York, London, Cairo and Tokyo, are considered vulnerable to permanent displacement by the middle of the century.

Without elaborating on these potential human catastrophes, Beckett alluded to the UK Treasury's recent Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change, which warned that climate change would almost certainly cause global economic convulsions "on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century." "That alone will inevitably have an impact on the security of all of us—developed and developing countries alike," she said. Most UN member countries were in agreement that this presented significant risks to political and economic stability.

However, this assessment also met with predictable resistance. Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin insisted that the topic of climate change did not belong in the Security Council. Pakistani ambassador Farukh Amil, representing the Group of 77 developing nations, declared that to entertain the issue of climate change not only "infringes" on the authority of the UN but also "compromises the rights of the general membership of the United Nations."

Venezuelan ambassador Pui Leong agreed, remarking that "the subject of energy is an area falling strictly under the sovereignty of states as part of their national development policies … every country, on the basis of its sovereignty, has the authority to decide on the use of its natural resources and to set its own environmental and energy policy."

US ambassador Alejandro Wolff embellished this point by praising the Bush administration's energy policy, including its $5 billion in voluntary business tax incentives and $1.65 billion in tax credits supposedly aimed at reducing emissions. Fully a quarter of the world's annual heat-trapping emissions are produced by the US.

According to a UN summary of the discussion, Wolff said that the most effective management strategy to allow states to prepare for threats to "security and stability" was to promote methods that "focus on education, rule of law, human freedom and economic opportunity." In other words, the US answer to climate change is to implement ineffective tax breaks for corporations in the US, while supporting capitalist development in other countries. This would somehow create the resources necessary for addressing climate change.

Wolff declared that the US had a "long history of extending help so that people could live in democratic societies with robust economies and strong and stable governments." This, presumably, includes the US invasion of Iraq, aimed at seizing control of the country's oil resources.

The debate over climate change and global warming management at the UN is a struggle among the national ruling establishments for their own interests on the international diplomatic stage. While there is concern that climate change can have unforeseen political and economic consequences, these competing capitalist states have no means of seriously addressing the issue, other than making preparations for cracking down on social unrest.

The US, for its part, defends the short-term interests of its ruling elite by seizing natural and energy resources through both privatization and war, and by consistently refusing to acknowledge international protocols. Tensions among nations have grown over the non-compliance of the US and other major polluters to international climate treaties following the release of the Independent Panel on Climate Change report.

While the Bush administration has done everything it can to prevent any serious discussion of global warming, sections of the political and military establishment are planning for the consequences of this warming and are developing military strategies to deal with it. In a new report released one day before the Security Council meeting, US military experts described the dire situation facing world powers.

Drawing upon peer-reviewed climate studies, the report warns that within three to four decades, climate change will spawn wars over water, increasing famine and disease outbreaks, inundation of populous coastal cities, and mass human migration. "The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," it states, urging US military preparedness.

The report, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, was undertaken by the government-funded national security think tank, the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), and co-authored by a military advisory board comprised of retired top-level brass, including six Navy admirals and five generals.

While not commissioned by the Bush administration or the Pentagon, some of the authors, who have close ties to officials in the Defense Department, said several branches of the military are now scrutinizing the problems posed by climate change.

The sobering and urgent tone of the report is noteworthy. Some strategists see stonewalling of climate data in the interests of oil companies as extremely reckless in its shortsightedness. The more far-sighted layers of the political establishment recognize that the short-term profits gained from current policy are being made at the expense of long-term profit and future US hegemony.

In particular, military experts are concerned that the potential scale of catastrophe could trigger revolution and political upheaval. "Many developing nations do not have the government and social infrastructures in place to cope with the type of stressors that could be brought about by global climate change," the report states. "When a government can no longer deliver services to its people, ensure domestic order, and protect the nation's borders from invasion, conditions are ripe for turmoil, extremism and terrorism to fill the vacuum."

While developing nation states with large populations are seen as especially vulnerable to such social unrest, the report also notes that all regions of the world may experience profound upheavals, including the developed countries of Europe. The report advocates bolstering US military bases and key allied governments in unstable regions of the world.

Like the multitude of scientific studies on climate change that have been published recently, the report projects that disease, droughts and flooding will make regions already crippled by humanitarian crises, such as the Middle East, Asia and Africa, more unstable. Mass migration from coastal and poor regions into richer countries is seen as a likely result, exacerbating social strife. Such a development could enable reactionary governmental appeals to nationalism and xenophobia and lead to conflagrations throughout Europe and North America.

Effects of global warming being felt in China

CTV.ca | Effects of global warming being felt in China

Effects of global warming being felt in China

When it comes to the world's worst polluters, the United States still leads the way, but China is set to soon take over as the largest overall producer of greenhouse gases. Many are wondering if any steps can be taken to ensure the country doesn't repeat the mistakes of the West.

With China's growing population with growing wealth and mass industrialization, the effects of global warming are already being felt.

At the home of Li Wen Zhang in Langtougou, about 110 kilometres from Beijing, years of warming temperatures have literally brought the desert to Li's doorstep.

Dry conditions have turned his village's once-fertile farm fields into a parched wasteland. His livestock live in sand dunes. Li's home is almost covered over. A local river that once ran waist-deep with water is now filled with sand.

"Some say I am like the fable of the old foolish man, trying to remove a mountain," he says.

The climate in China has changed quickly. Scientists estimate that in the last 50 years, the temperature in the populous country has increased by one degree Celsius.

That may not seem like a lot, but it has devastated this region. A local riverbed, for example, once flowed with water waist high; now it flows mostly with sand.

Chinese cities are also feeling the stifling effects of global warming. If it's not sand storms choking Beijing and other cities, it's heavy pollution causing problems. Many airports have been forced to close for hours at a time because pilots couldn't see through the soup of haze.

The country's growing use of coal for energy has experts predicting that by year's end, China will be the world's largest overall producer of greenhouse gases, surpassing the U.S. -- although the U.S., Canada, Australia and Luxemburg still produce far more greenhouse gases on a per capita basis.

With international pressure mounting, China is starting to turn to alternative energy sources. China is building windmill farms that house more than 300,000 turbines. However, it also opens up a new coal-fired power plant every week.

The government also plans to have its citizens curb electricity use by 20 per cent. But with a growing middle class consuming more power than ever, few expect targets to be met.

"If there's only target without any implementation policy, the target means nothing," said Ai Lun Yang of Greenpeace.

Chinese officials are urging the world to be patient, arguing it is still a developing country that is faced with more pressing problems like poverty.

In Li's village, the government donates thousands of trees to act as a buffer against the desert.

But it will have to do far more to prevent China from becoming the world's largest climate polluter -- and to control the damage that global warming-driven climate change is causing.

China warned on global warming effects

China warned on global warming effects - CNN.com

BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- Global warming could devastate China's development, the nation's first official survey of climate change warns, while insisting economic growth must come before greenhouse gas cuts.

Hotter average global temperatures fueled by greenhouse gases mean that different regions of China are likely to suffer spreading deserts, worsening droughts and floods, shrinking glaciers and rising seas, the National Climate Change Assessment states.

This environmental upheaval could derail the ruling Communist Party's plans for sustainable development, a copy of the report obtained by Reuters says.

"Climatic warming may have serious consequences for our environment of survival as China's economic sectors, such as agriculture and coastal regions, suffer grave negative effects," the report states.

Fast-industrializing China could overtake the United States as the world's top emitter of human-generated greenhouse gases as early as this year, and Beijing faces rising international calls to accept mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions from factories, fields and vehicles.

But underscoring China's commitment to achieving prosperity even as it braces for climate change, the report rejects emissions limits as unfair and economically dangerous, citing what it says are uncertainties about global warming.

"If we prematurely assume responsibilities for mandatory greenhouse gas emissions reductions, the direct consequence will be to constrain China's current energy and manufacturing industries and weaken the competitiveness of Chinese products in international and even domestic markets," it says.

The 400-page report was written over several years by experts and officials from dozens of ministries and agencies, representing China's first official response to global warming.

With its mixture of dire warnings and caveats, it bears the markings of bureaucratic bargaining.

China was one of a few countries that challenged claims about global warming presented in a draft report at a U.N. climate change meeting in Brussels earlier this month. That report was approved after some claims were softened and passages removed.

China's own national report says "uncertainties over climate change issues" justify rejecting international limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Disasters

But other parts of the report assert that the country's brittle environment will be severely tested by climate change.

By the end of the century, glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet highlands that feed the Yangtze river could shrink by two thirds. Further downstream, increasingly intense rainfall could "spark mud and landslides and other geological disasters" around the massive Three Gorges Dam.

Coastal cities will need to build or strengthen barriers to ward off rising sea levels.

Unless steps are taken, water scarcity and increasingly extreme weather could reduce nationwide crop production by up to 10 percent by 2030. Wheat, rice and corn growing capacity could fall by up to 37 percent in the second half of the century.

"If we do not take any actions, climate change will seriously damage China's long-term grain security," the report states.

China has repeatedly ruled out accepting mandatory international emissions limits, saying that rich countries are responsible for the accumulation of greenhouse gases and should not look to poorer countries for a way out.

"For a considerable time to come, developing the economy and improving people's lives remains the country's primary task," the report says.

Reduce carbon emissions and slow global warming

Journal and Courier Online - Guest Column

Reduce carbon emissions and slow global warming

By MEGAN WALKER and KATHRYN SCHREINER

For the Journal & Courier

As we celebrate Earth Day 2007, it is evident that the issues most relevant to the continued health and sustainability of the planet have changed.

From an early emphasis on environmental pollutants, the focus of Earth Day has recently expanded to include the causes and dangerous consequences of global climate change.

The primary drivers of recent climate warming are human emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 is produced whenever fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas are burned.

At Purdue University, six academic departments spanning the natural and social sciences and linked through the Purdue Climate Change Research Center are taking steps to quantify and suggest means to reduce the university's carbon dioxide emissions through a new course: Carbon Neutrality at Purdue. This assessment of carbon dioxide emissions takes the form of a "carbon footprint" -- the annual amount of carbon (in the form of CO2) which Purdue is responsible for producing, both directly and indirectly.

Purdue University's carbon footprint is composed of the carbon released when Purdue produces or purchases electrical power from fossil fuel sources, and from other activities, such as building construction and transportation.

Accounting for these activities, the carbon neutrality students have calculated that more than 191,000 metric tons of carbon are emitted both directly and indirectly to meet the annual energy and material demands of Purdue University. (For comparison, burning one gallon of gasoline in your car emits a little more than five pounds of carbon.)

However, measuring the size of Purdue's carbon footprint fulfills only half of the goals of the course. With the size and sources of the footprint established, we can now suggest effective means to reduce it.

To be truly "carbon neutral," Purdue would have to emit no net carbon, either by utilizing only carbon-free energy sources, such as wind or solar power, or by offsetting emissions by reducing emissions elsewhere. Our primary focus is reducing carbon emissions locally through a reduction in energy consumption.

Many of the strategies being suggested to reduce energy consumption and the carbon footprint at Purdue can also be undertaken by individuals who want to reduce their own impact on the environment.

Below are a few of the suggestions that the students and faculty of carbon neutrality will present a public forum.

*Adjust your thermostat: Heating and cooling account for almost 50 percent of a home's energy usage. Each degree of thermostat setback in the winter can save 3 percent on your heating bill, and each degree upward in the summer can save 6 percent on cooling.

*Replace traditional, incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. CFLs use 75 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs to produce the same quality and amount of light. If every home in the U.S. replaced five traditional light bulbs with CFLs, each home would save $60 a year and would prevent carbon emissions equivalent to that of 8 million cars.

*Insulate and seal your home: Caulk and add weather stripping around doors and windows to prevent drafts. Insulating your attic and walls also significantly reduces the amount of energy needed to heat and cool your home. Well-insulating a home can reduce heating and cooling needs by up to 10 percent.

*Unplug electronics (including computers) when they're not in use: 75 percent of the electricity used in homes is standby power - that is, power that is still flowing to your electronics even though you've turned them "off."

*Take the bus or carpool, ride your bike, or walk: Transportation accounts for approximately 30 percent of all CO2 emissions in the United States, and personal automobiles are big contributors. Lafayette and West Lafayette have an excellent bus system that serves almost all residential and popular commercial areas of the cities.

These are just a few of many energy-conservation suggestions which can not only reduce your impact on the environment, but save money as well.

Walker and Schreiner, graduate students at Purdue's Earth and Atmospheric Sciences department, are members of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center.

Antarctic changing rapidly, scientists unsure why

Antarctic changing rapidly, scientists unsure why

 

Antarctica is speeding up its delivery of ice and snow to the ocean, and scientists aren't sure why.

What's unclear is whether or not humans, through the emission of greenhouse gases that warm the atmosphere, are responsible.

That's according to glaciologist David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey. He spoke to Earth & Sky about Western Antarctica.

David Vaughan: This part of Antarctica is too cold at the moment. It doesn't get any melting, even in the warmest summer days. So, it's not just a question of atmospheric warming causing more melt. Actually, what we think is the cause is changes in the oceans. And the oceans, either the temperature of the water into which these glaciers are flowing or perhaps the amount of warm water that's delivered to the edges of these glaciers may be causing a change.

It's estimated that yearly net losses of Antarctica's ice total about 25 billion metric tons.

David Vaughan: Recent observations of just how rapidly the West Antarctic ice sheet, and also Greenland, are changing means that we don't at the present have enough information to make concrete predictions about how these things are going to change in the future.

Those changes, Vaughan added, could significantly add to sea level rise.

Humpbacks swim 8300 kilometres to lick record

Humpbacks swim 8300 kilometres to lick record
 

THE longest-known seasonal movement by any mammal has been discovered in a group of humpback whales that have travelled 8300 kilometres across the Pacific.

The humpbacks swam from the Antarctic Peninsula, up the west coast of South America and across the equator to waters off central America.

A return journey along the same route would mean that the animals covered at least 16,000 kilometres yearly in their quest to breed in one habitat - the tropics - and feed in the other.

The finding, reported in the publication Biology Letters, exceeds the previous known record migration by humpbacks, along the same route, by up to 600 kilometres.

It offers important clues to the reproductive habits of the species, which is still trying to recover from 20th-century whaling.

US biologist Kristin Rasmussen led a team that tracked seven humpbacks by photographing their individually marked tail flukes.

The greatest distance, 8461 kilometres, was travelled by one individual of unknown sex that was seen off Panama in 2001, and photographed again in Gerlache Strait off the Antarctic Peninsula in 2003.

US fears global warming warring

US fears global warming warring

 

The United States fears climate change could trigger new humanitarian crises and force countries to go to war over diminishing water and energy resources. 

 

American politicians are so concerned about the threats posed by the effects of global warming, they are legislating to elevate it to an official defence issue, with the CIA and the Pentagon required to assess the national security implications of climate change.

Australia has also signalled its intention to broaden its treatment of the issue from one that is just environmental to one that draws on expertise from all arms of government, including defence and intelligence.

In Jakarta yesterday, the Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said Australia would use its spy satellites to monitor illegal logging in Indonesia as part of a push to ban or confiscate furniture and other products made from logs harvested illegally overseas.

Already, Australia's leading intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, is conducting its own detailed study on the security implications of climate change. The research began late last year.

The US proposal, which its sponsors expect to pass through Congress with wide support, calls for the director of national intelligence to conduct the first-ever "national intelligence estimate" on global warming.

The effort would include pinpointing the regions at highest risk of humanitarian suffering, and assessing the likelihood of wars erupting over diminishing water and other resources.

The measure would also order the Pentagon to undertake a series of war games to determine how global climate change could affect US security, including "direct physical threats to the US posed by extreme weather events such as hurricanes".

Experts say the increasing focus on global warming as a security issue could open new avenues of support for tougher efforts to limit greenhouse gases.

"If you get the intelligence community to apply some of its analytic capabilities to this issue, it could be compelling to whoever is sitting in the White House," said Anne Harrington, director of the committee on international security at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. "If the White House does not absorb the independent scientific expertise, then maybe something from the intelligence community might have more weight."

The global warming intelligence assessment would identify where nations or ethnic groups were most likely to fight over resources; where large migrations of victims would occur; how warming would affect global food supplies; and the increased risks of infectious disease.

The Australian initiative by the ONA - undertaken with other intelligence agencies - is understood to have proceeded slowly, and is some time from completion. It does not have the scope of the proposed US national intelligence estimate.

Graeme Pearman, a climate change expert from Monash University, said security had to be looked at in a broad sense, "the security of food, the security of water and fuel, the possibility of invasive species destroying our productive ecosystem".

In Jakarta, Mr Turnbull's Indonesian counterpart, Rachmat Witoelar, said Indonesia would be happy to use information "from sophisticated surveillance methods that Australia can provide and we really want to know where and who, so I would welcome this data sharing".

He said shops and manufacturers should not buy wood suspected of coming from illegal logging in Indonesia. Consumers should reject any suspect wood and the Australian Government should make greater efforts to combat the trade, he said.