Climate Change Catastrophy
Following the previous article on the Paris Climate Agreement, this post outlines how the US and the UK are preparing their war machine to protect vested interests in the event of climate calamity
With an agreement on climate change moving at a glacial pace and the 2020 UN climate summit rescheduled for November 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems that the climate crisis has taken a back seat as the world grapples with a virus, itself a product of environmental degradation.
One thing that will never stop is conflict. And that will get worse in the future, according to the worlds major defence outfits. In 2007 The Pentagon shot the first salvo in a series of reports that would outline climate change from a military perspective. The report, National Security and the threat of Climate Change, was produced by the CNA Corporation.
The CNA Corporation:
was originated in 1942 as the non-profit Center for Naval Analyses, and became CNA Corporation in the 1990s. It employs nearly 400 staff and now includes the Institute for Public Research, which does studies on education, energy, water and climate, air traffic management, and security. The Military Advisory Board, which is part of the Institute, includes 15 retired Generals and Admirals from the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, and one retired British Rear Admiral.
The organisation:
provides research and analysis services for the public sector organizations to manage the scientific, operational, and policy challenges. Its naval analyses services include advanced technology and systems analysis, operations evaluation, resource analysis, strategic studies, China studies, operations and tactics analysis, and Marine Corps programs. The company also offers public research services on education, health research and policy, safety and security, organizational learning and effectiveness, and air traffic management. In addition, it provides services in the areas of national security and threat of climate change, and energy and risks to national security. The company serves department of homeland security, navy, Marine Corps, coast guard, department of defense, national aeronautics and space administration, and federal aviation administration and aviation system clients (Source: Bloomberg).
Having looked through the report, it obviously takes a military standpoint. But the scientific basis for climate change within the report is generally very robust as the investigators did consult key climate scientists, such as James Hanson from NASA. And the predictions for social unrest in the future as the climate crisis unfolds would certainly be in keeping with current thinking.
But there does appear to be an underlying message that the US would continue with its current foreign policy trajectory and that it would assume the role of global ‘policeman’.
The report highlights the Middle East as an area of particular concern:
Because of its enormous oil endowment, the Middle East is one of the most strategically significant regions of the world. The security impacts of climate change on the Middle East are greatly magnified by its historical and current levels of international conflict, and competition for increasingly scarce resources may exacerbate the level of conflict. This is the region of the world in which the U.S. is most engaged militarily. …the region already suffers from fragile governments and infrastructures, and as a result is susceptible to natural disasters. Overlaying this is a long history of animosity among countries and religious groups. With most of the world’s oil being in the Middle East and the industrialized and industrializing nations competing for this resource, the potential for escalating tensions, economic disruption, and armed conflict is great.
One of the revelations within the report is the severe stresses that climate change could impact on military activities. In particular, military bases around the world could have their operations hampered or even neutralised. The report notes that:
the highest point of Diego Garcia, an atoll in the southern Indian Ocean that serves as a major logistics hub for U.S. and British forces in the Middle East, is only a few feet above sea level. As sea level rises, facilities there will be lost or will have to relocated. Although the consequences to military readiness are not insurmountable, the loss of some forward bases would require longer range lift and strike capabilities and would increase the military’s energy needs.
One of the key messages from the report is the decoupling of military operations from conventional fossil fuel energy resources towards greater energy efficiency and renewables:
Lt. Gen. James Mattis, while commanding general of the First Marine Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom, urged: “Unleash us from the tether of fuel.”
Energy-efficiency technologies, energy conservation practices and renewable energy sources are the tools forward bases are using to stem their fuel demand and reduce the “target signature” of their fuel convoys.
This paradoxically contradicts the general political attitudes within Washington, where the discourse is orientated towards climate denial. The Pentagon is saying one thing, whilst those running the country are saying something different. Or are they?
According to a file published by Wikileaks dated 10 May 2007, three high ranking military officials attended a hearing with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the day before. They included, Gen. Charles F. Wald, the former deputy commander for the U.S. European Command, Retired Vice Adm. Richard Truly, a former astronaut who once headed NASA and the Naval Space Command. They left the Committee in no doubt as to the potential consequences of climate change.
Another message that comes out of the report is that if business continues as usual, the armed forces can be called upon to come to the rescue. Yet as the report itself indicates, the very problems facing society will also affect the military. In other words, any defence initiatives could become just as useless as everything else.
What appears to be emerging is a willingness to continue business as usual, that means maintaining an imperialist presence around the globe.
Nafeez Ahmed reflected on this issue in a Guardian article, which highlights a Department of Defense (DoD) program called the Minererva Research Initiative. Its purpose is to:
partner with universities “to improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US.”
Among the projects awarded for the period 2014–2017 is a Cornell University-led study managed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research which aims to develop an empirical model “of the dynamics of social movement mobilisation and contagions.” The project will determine “the critical mass (tipping point)” of social contagians by studying their “digital traces” in the cases of “the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian Duma elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi park protests in Turkey.”
Twitter posts and conversations will be examined “to identify individuals mobilised in a social contagion and when they become mobilised.”
And to emphasis the point:
the DoD’s Minerva Initiative funded a project to determine ‘Who Does Not Become a Terrorist, and Why?’ which, however, conflates peaceful activists with “supporters of political violence” who are different from terrorists only in that they do not embark on “armed militancy” themselves. The project explicitly sets out to study non-violent activists:
“In every context we find many individuals who share the demographic, family, cultural, and/or socioeconomic background of those who decided to engage in terrorism, and yet refrained themselves from taking up armed militancy, even though they were sympathetic to the end goals of armed groups. The field of terrorism studies has not, until recently, attempted to look at this control group. This project is not about terrorists, but about supporters of political violence.”
The project’s 14 case studies each “involve extensive interviews with ten or more activists and militants in parties and NGOs who, though sympathetic to radical causes, have chosen a path of non-violence.”
It all boils down to using counterinsurgency strategies in order to control protesters at whatever level they operate on.
One scenario ‘involved environmental activists protesting pollution from a coal-fired plant near Missouri, some of whom were members of the well-known environmental NGO Sierra Club. Participants were tasked to “identify those who were ‘problem-solvers’ and those who were ‘problem-causers,’ and the rest of the population whom would be the target of the information operations to move their Center of Gravity toward that set of viewpoints and values which was the ‘desired end-state’ of the military’s strategy.”
Such war-games are consistent with a raft of Pentagon planning documents which suggest that National Security Agency (NSA) mass surveillance is partially motivated to prepare for the destabilising impact of coming environmental, energy and economic shocks.
Ahmed sums up by saying that:
Minerva is a prime example of the deeply narrow-minded and self-defeating nature of military ideology. Worse still, the unwillingness of DoD officials to answer the most basic questions is symptomatic of a simple fact — in their unswerving mission to defend an increasingly unpopular global system serving the interests of a tiny minority, security agencies have no qualms about painting the rest of us as potential terrorists.
In 2015, a more concise report was released by the DoD on the security concerns of climate change.
This report carries more urgency and is unequivocal and succinct regarding the emerging threat of climate change:
DoD recognizes the reality of climate change and the significant risk it poses to U.S. interests globally. The National Security Strategy, issued in February 2015, is clear that climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources such as food and water. These impacts are already occurring, and the scope, scale, and intensity of these impacts are projected to increase over time. The Department’s defense strategy, as reflected in the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), emphasizes three pillars: protect the homeland, build security globally, and project power and win decisively. A changing climate increases the risk of instability and conflict overseas, and has implications for DoD on operations, personnel, installations, and the stability, development, and human security of other nations. This is why DoD released the Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap (CCAR) in October 2014. The CCAR identifies three overarching goals: to identify and assess the effects of a changing climate on the Department’s infrastructure, mission, and activities; to identify, manage, and integrate climate change considerations across the full range of Department missions and activities; and to collaborate with internal and external entities on understanding and assessing the challenges of a changing climate and developing appropriate responses to those challenges.
Particularly telling is the DoD assessment of the situation regarding Arctic ice melt:
Decreases in Arctic ice cover, type, and thickness will lead to greater access for tourism, shipping, resource exploration and extraction, and military activities. Land access — which depends on frozen ground in the Arctic — will diminish as permafrost thaws. These factors may increase the need for search and rescue (SAR) capabilities, monitoring of increased shipping and other human activity, and the capability to respond to crises or contingencies in the region. Difficult and unpredictable weather conditions, large distances, and scarce resources make emergency response in the Arctic difficult. Arctic operations are expensive and dangerous for military forces that are unprepared for the austere operating environment. DoD continues to evaluate the need for specific Arctic capabilities.
It is clear here that companies such as Shell, who are determined to exploit Arctic oil resources, are not only risking themselves, but are posing much wider problems in the event of a major accident. If such an incident were to occur, a response would be extremely risky and unpredictable and would require the mobilisation of considerable resources.
What also emerges from the report is the concurrence that:
in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) conclusions, climate change will have the greatest impact on areas and environments already prone to instability, which aligns with DoD’s wider assessment of climate change as a threat multiplier.
T
he effect of global warming is causing the Arctic Ocean to heat up, particularly around the coast of Siberia. This is releasing methane from the sea floor, which has a much higher global warming potential than CO2.
The threat here can’t be underestimated. They are huge quantities of what is called methyl hydrates on the sea floor. These are forming mega-plumes that are erupting from the Ocean. Last time such an event happened, it caused one of the greatest extinctions ever seen on earth.
The message here is stark. The planet is facing an unparalleled accelerated extinction event. Climate change has happened before. Its part and parcel of the evolution of the earth. But humanity is creating a process that could result in the end of the human race as we know it. A useful account can be found at Arctic News.
Then there is the question of the carbon bubble, which could create a major financial free-fall.
With a major divestment campaign underway, the prospect of stranded assets (the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground to avoid catastrophic climate change) is something that investors are becoming increasingly concerned about.
The Bank of England has raised its concern of the problem. Former Governor Mark Carney ‘launched a separate Bank of England inquiry into the threat of a crisis similar to the subprime mortgage crash. In March 2015, he branded rising temperatures one of the “top risks” facing the financial services sector, rejecting claims from former UK chancellor Lord Lawson he was talking “green claptrap”.’
Ahmed considers a research article in which:
New scientific models supported by the British government’s Foreign Office show that if we don’t change course, in less than three decades industrial civilisation will essentially collapse due to catastrophic food shortages, triggered by a combination of climate change, water scarcity, energy crisis, and political instability.
Its a future that the insurance industry is only too aware of:
Lloyds released a report for the insurance industry assessing the risk of a near-term “acute disruption to the global food supply.” Research for the project was led by Anglia Ruskin University’s GSI, and based on its GRO modelling initiative. Lloyd’s scenario analysis shows that food production across the planet could be significantly undermined due to a combination of just three catastrophic weather events, leading to shortfalls in the production of staple crops, and ensuing price spikes.’ Such a scenario would create ‘geopolitical mayhem as well as escalating terrorism and civil unrest.
Ahmed notes that other Government departments were involved in this research. These included ‘the Global Food Security Programme and UK Science & Innovation Network, together representing the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA); the Department of Health; the Department for International Development (DFID); the Government Office for Science; the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; and the Scottish and Welsh governments.’
Ahmed makes the remarkable conclusion that:
we know that in private, British and US government agencies are taking seriously longstanding scientific data showing that a business-as-usual trajectory will likely lead to civilisational collapse within a few decades — generating multiple near-term global disruptions along the way. The question that remains is: what we are going to do about it?
In 2020, Ahmed reported on research commissioned by the UK MOD, that stated the possibility of a 4C rise in global temperatures by 2100. The report predicts:
a potential 3.5°C temperature rise by end of century to forecast major new climate change developments “which will require increase demand for the Armed Forces to respond to unforeseen or extreme climate-related events, both at home and abroad.”
Ahmed notes that:
it puts forward the scenario unequivocally as an outcome which the UK government should simply expect to happen, rather than attempt to avoid.
The contents of the report are much the same as outlined in the previous reports noted above. Ahmed makes this interesting observation in the light of the coronavirus pandemic:
Climate change would also drive greater risks of exotic disease outbreaks, while simultaneously disrupting transportation networks needed to sustain healthcare delivery and critical national infrastructure.
Ahmed’s research indicates an ideological approach to climate change that will optimise economic output, or as Ahmed puts it:
For all practical purposes, climate safety is being sacrificed on the altar of GDP.
What it all boils down to is ensuring that the means are available to protect resources and British interests abroad. And that:
the UK military might need to go to war simply to ensure its ability to go to war (by stabilising access to critical resources).
The overall attitude then is to continue business as usual under the current neoliberal umbrella and hope that it doesn’t blow away in the coming storm.
There seems little doubt then that policy makers in the US (and elsewhere) are fully cognisant of the threat that climate change presents and are preparing for military intervention to protect their interests.
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