Climate Wars

UPDATE: Be sure to check out the comment thread, where a number of top environmental security experts weigh in.

I bet you you think this is going to be a continuation of last week’s discussion. Nah.

This week, I’ll be talking to scholars and experts who study the linkages between climate change, energy, and security. The shorthand for that nexus is climate security or energy security. Or, put another way: global warming = war.

In 2007, think tanks were just starting to define the climate/energy/security nexus. In 2008, intelligence experts sounded the alarm. In 2009, the CIA opened a climate change shop. Earlier this year, the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review declared:

Climate change and energy are two key issues that will play a significant role in shaping the future security environment.

These are important developments that deserve more attention. So far, public debate (which is minimal) seems to be shaped mostly by advocacy campaigns and political talking points.

In reality, the linkages between climate change, energy and national security are complex. Remember that impenetrable counterinsurgency powerpoint slide that recently bounced around the blogosphere? I bet there’s an equivalent one somewhere under lock and key that has a geopolitical diagram of the climate security threat.

What follows is a Q & A with two environmental security experts that seeks to clarify some of the core issues that have come to define climate security and energy security.

Geoff Dabelko is Director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, D.C. Cleo Paskal is an associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatam House, in London, and the author of the recent book, Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises will Redraw the World Map. (Disclosure: Several months ago, I reviewed Global Warring for Nature.)

Two questions for Geoff Dabelko:

Q: Last September you wrote in the journal Climatic Change that, “”˜climate security’ is in danger of becoming merely a political argument that understates the complexity of climate’s security challenges.” This recent commercial by VoteVets.org seems to bear out your concern. What is the danger of oversimplifying the climate security issue for political reasons?

GD: Distilling complex topics into compelling sound bites demands (over)simplification and big leaps from problem to solution. But after grabbing people’s attention, what argument are you really making?

Careful analysis of climate and security linkages must inform advocacy efforts and policy responses. But we must realize that a wide range of players will interpret this analysis for their own ends.

Environmentalists should not use climate security just because it “polls well” or because military officers make effective communicators. In the 1990s, environmental security was proffered as the national security issue of the 21st century, but when that proved not to be the case, the blowback was fatal.

The security concerns related to climate and energy range well beyond typical climate advocacy goals. For example, the Pentagon is focused on clear tactical vulnerabilities such as IEDs targeting fuel re-supply missions, and strategic vulnerabilities, including dependence on unstable regimes for fuel. Both concerns have led DOD to prioritize fuel efficiency and alternative fuels, which can help reduce carbon emissions but are not direct arguments for passing a cap and trade scheme.

Similarly, climate change could act as a “threat multiplier” or “conflict accelerant” in regions of the world already destabilized by poverty, scarcity, and/or poor governance. While climate change may contribute to this instability, it should not be framed as a new type of conflict or a certain path to catastrophe.

For example, not all “climate migration” will be destabilizing or even negative. Migration has been a rational adaptation strategy in the past and will likely continue to be one in a warmer future. Yet advocates are often tempted to paint a picture of hundreds of millions of migrants flowing South to North. Such false precision in the face of tremendous uncertainty undercuts the legitimacy of the problem.

The bottom line: Climate change poses a range of security challenges, some of which must be met by security actors and others by civilians.  Those efforts must be based on precise analysis, even when fitting it on a bumper sticker.

Q: Energy security is a buzz phrase that has made its way into the political discourse. It’ll probably be invoked as a central plank of the U.S. Senate’s climate bill, whenever that is unveiled. How can the U.S. best achieve energy security?

GD: Energy security is not a new label but an enduring one that gained salience in the oil crises of the 1970s.  It is now surging past climate change as the political frame for the energy and climate efforts on the Hill and at the White House.

Energy security has unfortunately been conflated with the call to “end our dependence on foreign oil.”  While politically appealing, this slogan is practically impossible, given the nature of the global oil market, and probably undesirable and unnecessary–Canada, our friendly neighbor, is actually our largest supplier of oil.  The challenge is to channel the strong support for reducing trade with fragile or hostile suppliers into support for measures that increase efficiency, cut demand, and transition to alternative fuel sources.  Making these demand-side reductions–not just changing suppliers–is a key step to achieving energy security. It’s politically more difficult, but ultimately necessary.

We also need the software as well as the hardware. Achieving energy security requires an honest accounting of subsidies and regulatory incentives and disincentives for the full portfolio of existing and future energy technologies and sources.  Alternatives to fossil fuels remain at a tremendous disadvantage despite recent changes for the better.  Massive public and private investment in technologies must be accompanied by revolutions of equal importance in regulatory and behavior change arenas.

Energy security depends on addressing the current and future energy infrastructure vulnerabilities, including equipment failure, extreme weather events, long-term environmental change (i.e., sea-level rise/surges in the Gulf or pipelines built on thawing permafrost), regulatory inflexibility, and terrorist attacks.

Three questions for Cleo Paskal:

Q: What’s the big collision coming up at the intersection of climate change and U.S. national security?

CP: Environmental disruptions (caused by climate change but also other environmental change factors, such as depletion of groundwater) are increasingly threatening domestic U.S. security across the board, including economically, socially, politically and militarily.