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Event: Center for Climate and Security Director to Speak to Congress Today on Climate Change Threats
John Conger, Director of the Center for Climate and Security, testifies before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on the Climate Crisis
UPDATE (7/15/2020): A recorded video of the event can now be found here.
At 3pm EST today, the Center for Climate and Security’s Director, the Hon. John Conger, will speak to the House Democratic Caucus National Security Task Force about climate change threats to security, in the wake of a new report from the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. Mr. Conger’s comments will build from two major publications from the Center for Climate and Security that influenced the select committee’s work. The first, titled “A Security Threat Assessment of Global Climate Change,” highlights the potentially severe-to-catastrophic security threats of climate change even at plausible lower emissions scenarios, and the second, titled “A Climate Security Plan for America: A Presidential Plan for Combating the Security Risks of Climate Change,” proposes a comprehensive federal plan for addressing climate security threats, in terms of both prevention/ mitigation and preparation/ adaptation. Click here for the livestream, once the event begins.
US Northern and Southern Command: Climate Change Impacts Our Area of Responsibility
Admiral Craig S. Faller, USN, Commander of U.S. Southern Command, speaks to the House Armed Services Committee on March 11, 2020
In case you missed it – on March 11, the Full House Armed Services Committee held a hearing on “National Security Challenges and U.S. Military Activity in North and South America.” Witnesses providing written statements and answering questions included the HON Kenneth Rapuano, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security, Admiral Craig Faller, Commander, U.S. Southern Command, and General Terrence O’Shaughnessy, Commander, U.S. Northern Command. In their conversations with committee members, the two commanders acknowledged that climate change is affecting their Area of Responsibility, or AOR.
Depopulating Military Installations Because of Sea Level Rise
The GAO’s Washington, DC Headquarters
In case you missed it, an audit of the U.S. Department of Defense’s installation climate resilience from last year, conducted by the Government Accountability Office, found that “installations have not consistently assessed risks from extreme weather and climate change effects or consistently used projections to anticipate future climate conditions.” One of those conditions is sea level rise that will affect multiple coastal installations (see here and here). Sea level rise will not only affect the physical infrastructure on these installations, it will also potentially lead to the inland migration of portions of the populations who live in the surrounding communities – some of whom form part of an installation’s work force. Depending on how far away and how many migrants move, their loss will degrade an installation’s ability to continue to function at an acceptable level over time. (more…)
Climate and National Security in the New “Solving the Climate Crisis” Report
On Tuesday 30 June, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the Climate Crisis issued a landmark report on the threats that climate change poses to the United States. Based on thousands of testimonies, inputs and recommendations from all sectors and regions of the country, the report outlines concrete legislative steps that the Committee recommends be taken to confront the challenge. In response, John Conger, Director of the Center for Climate and Security and former Deputy Comptroller of the U.S. Department of Defense, stated:
“We are pleased to see that the Committee’s report, “Solving the Climate Crisis”, recognizes the significant impacts of climate change on national security and includes several important recommendations in response. Their recommendations align with those that the Center for Climate and Security has embraced in its Climate Security Plan for America and A Security Threat Assessment of Global Climate Change, and they build on the important bipartisan work of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. We urge both the Administration and the Congress to continue prioritizing response to address this important national security threat.”