The White House says climate change isn't a national security threat. The military says it is.

The White House says climate change isn't a national security threat. The military says it is.
The administration’s new National Security Strategy document omits climate risks.
By Umair Irfan
Dec 18, 2017, 4:00pm EST


The Trump administration is backing away from calling climate change a national security threat, a move that contradicts nearly three decades of military planning.

Conspicuously absent from the National Security Strategy report released Monday is any mention of climate issues critical to national security, like how extreme weather drives conflict or how rising sea levels are a looming danger for coastal military facilities.

Compare this to President Obama’s 2015 National Security Strategy, which mentioned “climate change” 13 times across 35 pages and had “Confront Climate Change” listed as a security priority.

“Climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources like food and water,” according to the Obama report.

The new report mentions “climate” four times but refers to climate change only once, to criticize how addressing it hurts fossil fuels. “Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system. U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security interests,” according to the 2017 report.

The softening on climate change as a national security threat is part of an ongoing effort to dismantle climate change efforts across all government agencies. But it is at odds with the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which Trump signed into law earlier this month. The $700 billion law describes climate change as a “direct threat” to US national security.

The military has long considered climate change a “threat multiplier,” with assessments dating back to 1990. In 2014, the US Department of Defense published a climate change adaptation road map, oblivious to the political wrangling on the issue and writing that “[r]ising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict.”

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https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/18/16791106/white-house-climate-change-national-security-strategy-threat-military