Climate change as a security threat

The U.S. Senate is poised to consider S. 1538, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, which contains a provision that would require the U.S. Intelligence Community to produce a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the security threats posed by global climate change.

“For years, too many of us have viewed global warming as simply an environmental or economic issue. We now need to consider it as a security concern,” said Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) in comments last March introducing legislation calling for the NIE. Catastrophic climate change poses a number of possible security dangers, including:

• Rapid migration patterns created by environmental refugees fleeing stressed regions overwhelming disaster relief efforts.
• Threats to submarines and warships arising from shifting ocean navigation patterns.
• Drought intensifying competition for dwindling food and energy, potentially even stimulating nuclear proliferation

According to a recent report by the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), unchecked global warming has potential to work as a “threat multiplier,” creating failed states and triggering instability across the conflict spectrum. Sherri Goodman, executive director of the CNA study group that produced the report, will speak in Pittsburgh at the Ridgway Center’s “Securing Our Survival” conference October 12, 2007.

It’s only in the last year that “climate change itself has surfaced as a term that’s commonly recognized as having security implications,” said Kent H. Butts, a professor of political military strategy at the War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership. This shift has also engendered controversy; during last spring’s House debate on the climate NIE measure, lawmakers such as Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) objected that the move is “going to take analysts away from looking for Osama bin Laden.”

Despite such reservations, the House voted 230-185 to pass the 2008 Intelligence Authorization Act. Section 407 of that bill contains general language calling on the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to produce a climate change NIE within 270 days. Notably, Section 321 of the parallel Senate bill (S. 1538) features more specific language, directing the DNI to use scientific data from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in preparing the NIE.

Congressional staff told Security Sweep that since DNI McConnell has already committed to executing a climate change NIE, further legislative action in this area may be viewed as unnecessary. However, passage of the Senate language stipulating that the NIE be conducted “using the mid-range projections of the fourth assessment report of the [IPCC],” may focus intelligence analysis on the geopolitical effects of climate change, rather than shopworn technical arguments regarding climate science.