More Security Agencies Calling Climate Change a Threat

Earlier this week, I discussed the US Department of Defense's writing about climate security in its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), where it said "climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked."

I've seen two more examples of major security agencies give in-depth analyses of how climate change will affect security.  Yesterday and today, the US Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair (and former IISS-US Council Member), has given Congress the annual threat assessment of the US Intelligence Community.  In the testimony, he says: "Climate change will have wide ranging implications for US national security interests over the next 20 years." Here is a link to his statement for the record. Although news articles about this testimony focused almost exclusively on al Qaeda, DNI Blair's statement for the record gave significant analysis to how climate change will affect national security, going out to 2030.  Last year, he made a similar statement, which I blogged about, but this year's included significantly more regional analysis, including expected impacts on Russia, China, India, Southeast Asia, and Central America.  I'll give a more detailed explanation of the climate section tomorrow. 

Also new today, is the UK Ministry of Defense's (MoD) report, "Global Strategic Trends – Out to 2040".  This is a comprehensive report that goes through a litany of real threats to the UK over the next 30 years.  The report devotes significant space to the impacts of climate change, as well as other issues of environmental degradation.  Like I was discussing in yesterday's post about Bin Laden, the report calls grievances about global inequality a significant threat.