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The Center for Climate and Security: Our thoughts on climate change
The UK-based public policy news service, The Information Daily, reached out to us to see if we would like to comment on the changing climate. You can read what we had to say here, or copied below. The points made in this article echo the first blog article we wrote for the Center: An Unprecedented Risk Needs an Unprecedented Response. (more…)
NRC: Implications of Abrupt Climate Change for National Security and the U.S. Military
The National Research Council just released an updated report, Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises, on the issue of abrupt climatic change, potential impacts of these changes and tipping points that can be triggered by gradual changes in the climate. The report’s introduction states, “The fundamental concerns with abrupt change include those of speed — faster changes leave less time for adaptation, either economically or ecologically — and of magnitude — larger changes require more adaptation and generally have greater impact.” These are also the concerns that keep security practitioners up at night. (more…)
Marqusee and Titley: Learning Security Lessons from Hurricane Sandy
There is a lot we can learn from what went right and what went wrong in our preparation and response to Hurricane Sandy. Two former Department of Defense officials, Jeff Marqusee, former executive director of the DOD’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, and retired Navy Rear Admiral David Titley, director of the Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk at Penn State, recently penned an op-ed for the Virginian-Pilot highlighting what we can learn from the military. Their points are specifically in regards to Hurricane Sandy, but the lessons they draw demonstrate how the “military planning community” is and will be a vital actor in preparing and responding to climate change-associated risks of all kinds. (more…)
China, Water Transfers, Disease and Climate Change: Transferring Risk with Water?
China is in the process of constructing a massive “South-North Water Transfer Project” connecting the more water-abundant south to the water-stressed north. There are a number of motivations for building the project including natural water scarcity, increased demand from both increased industrialization and population, decreasing water quality, and recent instances of severe droughts (with implications for global food supply). There are still some uncertainties about how exactly climate change will impact water resources in China, but projections of significant rainfall variability are well-founded, and the government is taking the potential risks seriously. In that context, this project could be seen as part of China’s climate adaptation strategy, though it is already apparent that there are some serious unintended consequences. (more…)