The Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security

The End of the Transatlantic Dialogue

2011-02-11T20:46:00.001-05:00

This will be the last post on the blog. As of February 1, I am no longer working at the IISS. I can say with confidence that the dialogue was successful in bringing together a diverse group of experts to discuss how climate change will affect a broad range of security threats. We held workshops on water, food, and energy security. We held larger conferences to bring the debate outside the experts, in both Washington and Brussels.

We delivered our report (PDF) to the European Commission at the end of January. With the completion of the report, my time at the IISS has come to an end, and I have moved on. If you are looking for updates on me, take a jump over to my personal website at www.andrew-holland.com. I will also continue my blogging at www.revolutionarytransitions.blogspot.com. I will continue to look at how climate change affects security, but I will also write about the broader changes that the earth and human society are undergoing. I hope that you will update your RSS feeds and your bookmarks.

Finally, if you are looking for the most up-to-date analysis of global affairs from the IISS, I would direct you to the IISS voices blog, which should be your first stop for any global security issue.

Thanks go out to all who participated in our events; it would not have been a success without you. Thanks also to everyone who followed this blog from its inception to its closure. I really believe that blogging is the best way to reach a large and connected audience around the world. Thank you.

Summary of the Launch Event in US

2011-02-04T18:17:00.004-05:00

Last week, on Wednesday, January 26, the IISS held a small event to launch our report on climate change and security. This report was submitted to the European Commission, as the final results of the two years of research and conferences. You can download the report (PDF) from the IISS' server. Unfortunately for our turn-out, we decided to hold the event during a major snowstorm. We were expecting about 30 people, but the snowstorm brought it down to just a group of 15. However, the small audience made it possible to have a substantive discussion among an expert group of participants.

If you are going to be in London on Monday, I would encourage you to sign-up to attend the London event of this at our headquarters.

The Washington event featured your humble blogger, Andrew Holland, in my capacity as the Research Associate and Programme Manager for the IISS Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security (right, in the picture). I spoke about the main findings and recommendations that were presented in the report. Esther McClure, the Strategy Action Officer for Arctic, Energy and Environmental Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defence - Policy responded to the report and gave an overview of what how the Pentagon is looking at climate change (left, in the picture). She was speaking in her capacity as an expert on the issue, and was not speaking for the US government; her remarks were off-the-record, so all I can say is that she was very good, and presented some interesting ideas. The event was moderated by Günter Hörmandinger, the First Counselor for Environment of the Delegation of the European Union to the United States of America (center, in the picture).`Although you can't read any of Esther's comments, after the jump, I am happy to provide a summary of what I said at the event.

Statement:
This is an important statement, and should be broken into its constituent parts.

The impacts of climate change combine to make it a clear threat to collective security and global order in the first half of the 21st Century.

First, it is important that to define what to mean by ‘climate change’. It is unequivocal that the earth is warming, and it has been for at least a century. The last decade was the warmest on record, while each of the three decades before that were also the warmest on record. The trend since the 1970’s is of an average global increase of .2 degrees Celsius per decade. When future climate change is talked about , the expectation should be a similar trend for at least the next thirty to forty years, if not an acceleration.

There are two important qualifications in any climate predictions: variability and uncertainty are features of the climate system. We should not expect changes to be uniform or smooth, and in fact, year-to-year variation should be expected to increase.

Second, the impacts of climate change are what present a threat, not warming per se. Warming alone is not a threat. The threat to security comes from the predicted significant changes in natural and human systems – particularly water, food and energy.

Of these, changes in fresh water resources will be the most visible and significant impacts of climate change on human society. In some areas this will mean drought and desertification. In others, flooding and increasingly damaging storm and rain events should be expected.

Food supplies will also be negatively impacted by climate change. Without significant, dedicated increases in investment, we should expect significant reductions in food supplies

The impact on energy systems will be complex, but also likely to be negative. Our modern energy system is built upon long supply chains and trillions of dollars in fixed infrastructure investments. But, our findings indicate that it is remarkably brittle. For example, arctic energy infrastructure is vulnerable to melting permafrost and low-lying oil storage units are vulnerable to rising sea levels.

Third, “collective security” refers to threats to state stability and to the global commons. The report does not see climate change as a threat to the stability and continuity of any major, developed country. However, it does present significant threats to state stability in weaker states. The links between climate change and conflict are complex, but clear.

Finally, it is only possible to make predictions for the first half of the 21st Century. Any longer time-frame is pure speculation. Though some will make plausible scenarios for almost any situation, any predictions for the strategic situation more than forty years from now cannot be credible.

Key Recommendations

Adaptation to climate change will be essential – but this should not simply be seen as simply throwing money at it. Properly targeted funding can be helpful in reducing the threats of conflict.
Water must be at the center of adaptation efforts, because of the threats that water shortages present to security.
Military and intelligence organizations have the most experience in strategic planning under conditions of uncertainty. They understand that waiting for certainty often means that you have waited too long. Intelligence communities in both Europe and America should fully examine and prepare for the many scenarios that a changing climate presents.

Event Advisory: “The Results of the IISS Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security”

2011-01-21T17:36:00.000-05:00

Next week, on Wednesday, I will be presenting the results of the IISS Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security at the IISS's US office here in Washington. Esther McClure, a Strategy Action Officer for Energy and Environmental Policy at the Pentagon. The discussion will be moderated by Günter Hörmandinger, the Coundelor for Environment from the Embassy of the European Union.

The event will begin at 4:45 pm on Wednesday, January 26. It should be an interesting discussion that will hopefully highlight some of the areas of differences and for cooperation in the approach of the US and EU to climate and security policy.

Here's a sneak peak:

Climate change is at the heart of both national and collective security. The earth is unequivocally warming, and no matter what action is taken to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, that warming is very likely to continue for at least the next 30-40 years. This discussion will focus on the role security planners have in preparing for a warmer climate, so that the impacts of climate change – like sea level rise, changes in water resources, or food shortages – do not fuel conflict.

On another note, this will be my swan-song with the IISS. As this program comes to an end, my time at the IISS will also come to an end.

There is still room available. To join us at the event, please RSVP to events-washington@iiss.org. I am looking forward to a good discussion with our panelists and our participants.

Next week, I'll post details of what will happen to this blog after I've left the IISS. I will also post the link to the report, when we put that up on the IISS' website.

Climate Agreement in Cancun: Important Progress, but Difficult Questions Remain Unanswered

2010-12-14T19:11:00.000-05:00

In the early hours of Saturday morning in the Mexican tropical resort of Cancun, international climate negotiators from the 193 countries and observer states came to agreement on what will now be know as the 'Cancun Agreements'. After the very public perceived failure of the Copenhagen summit last year in Denmark, it was very important that this meeting ended successfully. I wrote last week that "A failure to come to any agreement in Cancun would probably spell the end of the UN as a negotiating forum for climate change."

The agreement text came out of two separate negotiating forums, the "Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol" and the "Ad Hoc Working Group on long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention". The formal agreements, to be found here and here, respectively. There are two negotiating tracks within the UNFCCC because the parties to the Kyoto Protocol do not include all of the countries that are signatories to the UNFCCC, most notably the United States.

What to do with the Kyoto Protocol, expiring in 2012, was the source of the most contention during the summit. I worried last week that the Cancun Summit could fail under the divide between developed and developing countries, enshrined as a part of the Kyoto Protocol. Kyoto is fatally flawed because it asks everything from developed countries, while asking nothing from developing countries - which include many of the world's largest emitters, like China (#1), India (#4), Brazil, and Indonesia. It was further weakened because the United States, bowing to political and economic reality, chose first not to ratify it, then to withdraw from it. The Cancun Summit ended in success simply because it decided to 'punt' on the issue of whether to continue Kyoto after it expires in 2012. Next year's summit in Durbin, South Africa will be the last conference before Kyoto's expiration, so this question will have to be addressed by then.

Although the Cancun Agreement dodged the question of Kyoto, there are some significant achievements of note. It formally commits the parties of the UNFCCC to ensuring that climate change does note exceed 2 degrees of warming over this century. On mitigation (agreements to reduce emissions), the Cancun agreement codifies the voluntary mitigation targets agreed to by signatories of the Copenhagen Accord. This is a huge milestone, because it is the first time that all major economies have pledged explicit actions in a UNFCCC document since its creation in 1992. It also made significant steps on a climate financing mechanism for adaptation and mitigation by developing countries. It delegates to the World Bank the responsibility for creating a "Green Climate Fund" that would mobilize the pledged funding of $100 billion a year in public and private financing promised by 2020.

In January 2010, I wrote in an IISS Strategic Comment that "the success of the Copenhagen Accord had yet to be seen". The Cancun agreement essentially adopts the Copenhagen Accord, including the emission mitigation targets voluntarily submitted by approximately 80 countries and the measuring, reporting, and verification compromise agreements - largely negotiated between the United States and China. The Cancun Agreements successfully brought the Copenhagen Accord into the UNFCCC negotiating process. Therefor, upon further reflection, it seems that Copenhagen, too, was a bit of a success, had it been judged against any standard that wasn't so ambitious to say that Copenhagen as the "Summit to save the planet".

At Cancun, negotiators yet again failed to save the planet - the mitigation targets agreed to could bring up to 3 or 4 degrees of warming over this century - but they did succeed in creating much of the global architecture that one day could help to save the planet.

Cancun Climate Summit Troubled by Copenhagen's Divisions

2010-12-10T11:59:00.000-05:00

For the past two weeks, government officials, climate campaigners, and the traveling circus that follows international negotiations have descended on the tropical resort island of Cancun on Mexico’s Caribbean Coast.

The Cancun summit was not supposed to come up with a formal global deal on climate emissions. Instead, it was to make incremental progress on agreements for financing of adaptation and mitigation in developing countries, and agreement on “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation” (REDD). There is also continued hope that the two largest emitting countries, China and the United States, can come to agreement on how to monitor, report, and verify actions on emissions. Action on this is important to the United States, so that they know that any agreements negotiated will be fulfilled. Likewise, it is important to China to resist overly intrusive measures that would compromise their national sovereignty. Hope was raised on agreement on this issue in remarks made by China Huang Huikang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's envoy for climate change talks:

"We can create a resolution and that resolution can be binding on China. Under the (U.N. Climate) Convention, we can even have a legally binding decision. We can discuss the specific form. We can make our efforts a part of international efforts."

Ultimately, the goal of Cancun was to act as a bridge to the 2011 summit in South Africa, in hopes of negotiating a formal settlement there.

However, there is an issue that has arisen as the most important and contentious – and threatens to bring down the talks: whether countries will agree to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol after its planned expiration date in 2012. Many negotiators, including the United States, thought that the Kyoto Protocol – signed by President Clinton in 1997, never ratified by the Senate, and formally withdrawn from in 2001 by President Bush – had been finally killed by the Copenhagen Accord last year.

The division over Kyoto boils down to the same developed/developing country divide that plagued the Copenhagen Summit last year. By and large, developing countries want to extend Kyoto, and developed countries want to switch negotiations to a treaty that would look like the Copenhagen Accord. The foundation of this dispute is that the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated and agreed under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility”. What that means in practice is that developed countries are responsible for making verifiable emissions reductions, while nothing is asked of developing countries. The United States and EU argue that it is unfair to ask developed countries to reduce their emissions, while large developing countries, including China or India – the 1^st and 4^th largest emitters in the world, respectively – are not asked to reduce their emissions. Not only is this inequitable, it is inefficient – because businesses could simply more their production from a place like Europe – where carbon emissions are limited by law, and therefore cost money – to China, where carbon pollution is not limited. In the terms of the climate change debate, this is called ‘Carbon Leakage’ and it implies that global emissions (the only thing that matters for climate change) could actually go up by limiting emissions in one area, but not in another. So far, only Japan and Russia have formally come out against extending Kyoto, but Canada and other countries are also likely to oppose an extension.

However, with some developing countries, support for Kyoto has become a symbol of anti-western solidarity. Most developing countries, however, are in favor of extending the Protocol, with some Latin American countries, notably Bolivia and Venezuela, saying they will not support any agreement that comes out of Cancun unless it continues the principles of the Kyoto Protocol. This threat is credible because Venezuela, Bolivia, and Sudan blocked formal ratification of the Copenhagen Accord last year over similar concerns.

Another factor in the debate about the Kyoto Protocol is that the United States is not a signatory to the Protocol, and an extension of it would mean that the US is not involved. The American negotiators are insisting that agreement that comes out of Cancun moves beyond Kyoto and recognizes the legitimacy of the Copenhagen Accord and the 2020 emission targets which both developed and developing countries made when they signed onto it.

A failure to come to any agreement in Cancun would probably spell the end of the UN as a negotiating forum for climate change. Last year’s Copenhagen summit left a bitter taste with many participants, because of the inability to negotiate among such a large and unwieldy body. Already, forums like the G-20 and the Major Economies Meetings on Climate Change and Energy Security are beginning to supplant the UN.

Interesting Links:

The UNFCCC is very transparent in the negotiations. Anyone wishing to follow today's negotiations can watch it here. The Cancun Summit's home page is here.

The IISD's reporting service has done an excellent job summarizing each day's conference. You can find it here.

Finally, the newspaper doing the best job in their coverage of this is the Guardian, here.

The Melt - Asia Society

2010-12-08T11:35:00.001-05:00

The Asia Society's "China Green" project has a new video out on their website called "The Melt" that gives a very quick, but important overview on how the glaciers in the Himalayas are changing, and the impacts that are being felt by the people who live in that area.

The video is clearly of very high production quality, and relies not only on interviews of western researchers, as sometimes happen in these sort of productions, but they also sent a film crew to Tibet to chronicle the changes in glaciers.

Source: Asia Society

I've written about this on our blog several times. Its important to remember that, although the IPCC report was wrong to say that all the glaciers may be gone by 2035, they are melting - at an increasing pace.

Some quick quotes from the video: "It's mostly about water" "If this keeps going, people and animals will no longer be able to get enough water". The focus on water as the first, and most important impact of climate change on human society tracks exactly with the findings of the IISS.

Videos and projects like this are extremely important, because they are not only aimed at western audiences. By traveling over to China and interviewing people in Tibet, videos like this can raise awareness within China too about the impacts of climate change. As the two largest emitters of carbon, the US and China are the key players in acting to reduce their emissions - and nations act only when it is in their interest to act. This video makes it clear that China, and Tibet, are already paying the costs for climate change.

I tried to have the video embedded here, but they have not released the code. Head over to their website, and watch the whole 10 minute video. It is well worth your time.

Europe Can Teach America about Energy Security and Climate Policy

2010-11-19T12:51:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, Forbes.com published a column by Larry Bell, “Disarmament in America’s Energy Security Battles”. I thought it was extraordinary, even by the low standards of opinion journalism, in its blatant disregard for the facts. So, I wrote to Forbe's editors, in order to correct the record. I've copied the letter below.

I am writing in response to Larry Bell’s November 18 column, “Disarmament in America’s Energy Security Battles” printed on Forbes.com. This column is notable for its lack of facts and its assertions against renewable energy that simply do not have a basis in reality. Mr Bell uses hyperbolic language and assertions that are simply not backed-up by the facts.As a favor, then, to Forbes’ editors and readers, I will attempt to put some real facts behind his statements, then you can determine whether his assertions are correct, or just hot air. As the author of “Learning from Europe on Climate Change” in the December 2009 issue of Survival, I am well-placed to offer informative, fact-based analysis of energy security and climate policies. I would appreciate it if you would print my response in full.

An unfairly maligned Spanish wind farm

First, Mr Bell asserts that the EU is facing “costly, yet unsuccessful, CO2 emission reduction efforts.” In fact, the opposite is true – the EU has been successful in reducing its emissions, and at low cost. Last month, the European Commission released a report stating that, by 2012 (the date for compliance with the Kyoto Protocol) the emissions of the EU-15 (the 15 Western European countries) will be 10.4% below 1990 levels, and the emissions of the EU-12 (the 12 former East Bloc countries) will be 36.8% below 1990 levels. This means that the EU as a whole will reduce its emissions 17.3% below 1990 levels. Alone among major developed economies, the EU will meet the emission reduction commitments it made when it signed the Kyoto Protocol. In Europe, it is true, the cost of energy – both electricity and gasoline – is generally higher (rates vary greatly throughout the EU), but that is the result of long-standing government policies that encourage energy security, not a recent increases from climate policies. In France, for instance, the cost per KWh of electricity is about 19.25¢, while in the USA, it is about 10.45¢.

Mr Bell then goes on a rant against the wind industry. It is true that wind energy requires high up front infrastructure costs, but he does not acknowledge that once they are running, there are no fuel costs – which can fluctuate widely – as there are with traditional electricity power plants. He then cites a report from Spain, repeatedly pushed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, that has been widely debunked as based upon flawed analysis and untrue foundations. For instance, the report estimates that Spain’s renewable program created only 50,000 jobs, when official estimates are 188,000. The argument they make is that supporting renewable energy destroys jobs by causing the loss of 2.2 jobs for every 1 created. It is based on flawed analysis, and it just goes to show that you can always find an economist to support your view. It doesn’t make them right, though.

Mr Bell then states that “high wind power premiums” get passed onto customers, while talking about wind farms in Texas. What he doesn’t mention is that in his home state of Texas, the state with most installed wind power – about 8 gigawatts – the Public Utility Commission said “Wind generation has had the impact of reducing wholesale and retail prices of electricity.”

Solar power, too, receives Mr Bell’s attention, saying that solar power doesn’t work, because of ‘night’. Of course this is simplistic. He doesn’t mention that night is when electricity demand is lowest. He also doesn’t mention that new Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants are being developed (in Europe, of course), that will heat molten salt in order to store power so that it can continue producing power through the night.

Next on Mr Bell’s target list is the supposed fact that Germany is canceling planned coal power plants because of “environmental resistance”. What he doesn’t mention is that this is being driven more by free-market realities than by concerns about carbon emissions. Coal prices in Europe are now trading close to their two-year high, at $108.50 per metric ton, due to rising demand from China. In fact, the high price of coal this year has meant that utilities burning coal in the UK have averaged a net loss of 9 pence (14 US cents) per megawatt hour in 2010. Due to these market realities, utilities in Europe are increasingly turning to natural gas, and –yes – renewables for their power generating capacity.

French nuclear power plants

Mr Bell then goes ahead to extoll the virtues of French leadership on nuclear power. It is true, as he says, that France is major nuclear technology leader and exporter, and that it obtains 80% of its electricity from nuclear power. However, we should not mistake this for the effects of the free market. 35 years ago, the French government and Électricité de France (EDF), the then government-owned utility, came together to create a massive, and successful nuclear power program. However, it wasn’t due to free markets that this came about.

I agree with Mr Bell that the United States should return to building nuclear power. It can provide low-cost, carbon-free baseload power to large areas of the United States. However, we should not pretend that the free market will supply it. Constellation Energy recently announced that it would be cancelling the building of a new reactor in Maryland due to cost issues. It could not raise sufficient funds from Wall Street, and it was seeking loan guarantees from the US Department of Energy for $7.6 billion, 80% of the cost of the project. Even then, Constellation determined that the costs of the project were too high. Certainly, free-market people like Mr Bell would not support the government giving loans to build nuclear power?

Finally, Mr Bell talks about America’s “vast deposits of oil, natural gas and oil shale”. True, the shale gas revolution of the last three years in the US has changed us from a net importer to a net exporter of natural gas. At a time when gas extraction is booming in this country, he must surely be mistaken in saying that “our energy developers struggle”. On oil, though, he is wrong that we have vast untapped reserves, either on or off shore. US oil production peaked at 9.6 million barrels per day (mbpd) in 1970. Today we produce 5.4 mbpd, and we use approximately 19.7 mbpd. No amount of extra drilling in this country is going to close that gap – John Hotmeister, former President of Shell Oil, US said that reduced government restrictions could bring 2 mbpd extra online, and most of that would be from opening the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. The truth is that the United States will never again be a major power in oil production.

While Mr Bell claims that energy developers in the US are unduly burdened by “expanding government restrictions, regulations and legal challenges”, but he fails to note that the subsidies to oil and gas companies add up to about $4 billion per year.

And there lies the truth – Bell says we should “let free markets, not government, pick the winners.” But, the truth is that Bell wants the opposite – his policies would have the government favor dirty energy over clean-yesterday’s energy over tomorrow's. His policies will have the US cede leadership in tomorrow’s new clean energy economies to Europe and – especially – China. Instead of letting blind opposition to President Obama’s agenda cloud their analysis of America’s future energy options, Mr Bell and Forbes’ editors should instead do a fact-based examination of the actual costs and benefits of proposals. Perhaps also, it would be better to take our advice on energy policy from experts in that field, instead of a professor of Space Architecture who is trying to sell a book.

US Climate Policy with a Republican House

2010-11-08T18:34:00.000-05:00

Below is a blog post from IISS intern, Marie Steinrucke, with a good analysis of how climate policy affected the elections, and what that means for policy going forward. I’ve presented it mostly unchanged. I’m hopeful that there’s space for agreement and compromise on climate policy in the next Congress, but certainly there is some reason for pessimism.

Since the Republicans regained control of the house on November 2^nd, newspapers and blogs have been debating to what extent the GOP victory will affect possible climate change legislation. Opinions are sharply divided between those who believe that the election outcome will be detrimental for climate change action and those who say that the election was only marginally about the issue.

In analysing the possible effects of the GOP wins it is useful to look at how voting on the Waxman-Markey climate bill affected candidates’ re-election. In his blog for the Council on Foreign Relations, Michael Levi asserts that the issue of cap-and-trade mattered only in individual races, but did little for the overall victory of the Republicans in the house. Furthermore, when the bill did matter in individual races, it tended to be in those battles where the Democratic candidate was already in deep trouble. Samuelson and Bravender of Politico argue on the contrary, saying that many incumbent Democrats, particularly from rural, suburban and industrial districts lost their seats in part due to their vote on the climate bill.

The big question remains: how does all this affect President Obama’s big plans for energy reform? The truth may be that Obama has already accepted some degree of defeat on the energy front and realizes that sweeping reforms in the energy sector fall in the category of wishful thinking in the current political climate. The New York Times recently quoted him saying: “Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it is not the only way.” He was open to introduce smaller policy ‘bites’ in order to attract Republicans. Obama probably knew that any cap-and-trade policy was impossible, at least for now, when it failed to pass in the Senate this summer. The question will be whether Republican members of Congress will accept even small concessions on the energy front or whether they will categorically oppose reform suggestions in a harsh economic climate. President Obama is facing a new Congress in which many newly-elected members do not believe in the concept of global warming caused by humans and the new speaker of the house, John Boehner (R-OH) has labelled energy reform solutions as “job-killing energy taxes.”

Proponents of climate change action do have one victory to flaunt after the November 2^nd slaughter. In California, voters vehemently opposed proposition 23, a ballot initiative that would have reversed state-wide clean-energy requirements. In its reporting on the issue, the Christian Science Monitor called this rejection a sign that the election was about housing and jobs, not about energy issues.

Although one may argue about the importance of energy reform legislation in the 2010 midterm election, it remains to be seen how the shift towards a Republican controlled house will affect President Obama’s energy agenda. Will he be able to frame the debate in a way acceptable to Republicans or will they form a wall of resistance? The change certainly means that he will have to unite his own party on energy issues, a difficult task in itself. One can hope that the Obama administration will see its party’s losses as an incentive to re-frame the energy debate to make it more appealing to conservative leaders.

Climate Wars: Not if, but When

2010-11-05T15:24:00.000-04:00

Today, I am republishing a blog post from Jeff Mazo, the IISS' Research Fellow for Environmental Security and Science Policy. He posted it to the IISS 'Voices' blog about a presentation given in London by Gwynne Dyer about his new book "Climate Wars". I've met Gwynne several times, and his analysis is always very interesting, even if the prognosis does tend to the pessimistic, as Jeff says below. The difference between Jeff and Gwynne's prognosis is not only a difference in magnitude, but also the difference between how an analyst and a reporter look at these problems. Why not buy both of their books and see for yourself?

Imagine this: sometime in the next 10–15 years, a tide of refugees heading north from Mexico prompts the US military to seal the border. With an increasing proportion of the US population of Hispanic origin, negative publicity from the 24-hour news cycle and online media such as YouTube leads to 'the greatest social division since the Civil War'. This is just one of the dire scenarios that might arise from climate change set out by journalist and author Gwynne Dyer at a discussion meeting at the IISS in London on 4 November.

His remarks, based on his book Climate Wars, painted a bleak picture of a future where water shortages and crop failures lead to mass migration, state failure – 'Somalia × 20' in Africa and the Middle East – and wars between countries that share river systems already stretched to the breaking point.

If Iraq had a 'real army', Dyer said, it would already be at war with Turkey over the latter's dams on the headwaters of the Euphrates. In South Asia, we can look forward to 20 years of summer flooding followed by excessively dry summers in the Indus watershed as the Himalayan glaciers disappear. War – possibly nuclear – over water was likely between India and Pakistan within the next 25 years.

Dyer's scenarios are far more pessimistic than anything I discuss in my own Climate Conflict, published in the IISS Adelphi series earlier this year. This is principally because he is looking at worst cases in terms of projections of emissions and their climate impacts, whereas I deliberately chose to take a more conservative approach. I considered a world where, in the next two or three decades, the climate impacts of global warming are of a magnitude similar to the normal background variation.

I have no doubt that unmitigated climate change will eventually lead to the types of consequences, if not the exact scenarios, Dyer foresees. The question is how soon we can expect them – in 20 years, in 50 years, in 100 years. The scientific uncertainty is quite high and it would be rash to take either version as gospel.

The Nuclear Energy Debate in Germany and the US

2010-10-19T14:39:00.002-04:00

Three Mile Island (Copyright National Geographic)

IISS-US Intern Marie Steinrucke has put together an interesting guest post on recent developments on nuclear energy in Germany and the United States. I think she brings up some very important points in the debate.

In Europe and the United States recent developments have once again sparked the nuclear energy debate. The results may be counter-intuitive to many people who have followed the discourse in recent years. The German public has been highly critical of the country’s nuclear program ever since its inception in the 1970s, but those who hoped Germany’s nuclear age was coming to an end recently experienced a disappointment when Chancellor Merkel passed legislation in the German Bundestag to extend nuclear plant lifespans by up to 14 years. Ironically, both proponents and opponents of the lifespan extension argue that their stance is necessary to build up renewable energy capacities in years to come. The right-wing coalition supporting the extension says that nuclear power is needed to support Germany’s transition to renewable energy sources, while the left-wing fears that keeping the reactors on the grid longer will halt innovation in the field of renewable energy.

Germans Protest Nuclear Power (Copyright AP)

In the United States, popular support for nuclear power has increased in recent years and commentators have predicted a ‘nuclear renaissance.’ Yet the failure of one company’s proposal to build a new plant on Chesapeake Bay indicates the difficulties currently faced by the industry. The Economist reports: “On October 8th Constellation Energy, a power company, gave up trying to persuade the government to reduce its proposed fee for a loan guarantee for a planned nuclear plant on Chesapeake Bay.” In an October 10th article by the New York Times the author blames the economic recession for the slump in nuclear energy projects. There has been a significant fall in the demand for electricity (4 per cent between 2007 and 2009), while the price of natural gas has plummeted, making nuclear energy less competitive. Furthermore, Congress has been unwilling to pass climate change legislation to reduce CO2 emissions, limiting incentives for switching to different energy forms. These factors contribute to the circumstance that nuclear energy is no longer financially attractive to many utility providers in America.

The pros and cons on either side of the nuclear energy debate are so complex that most voters choose to either rely on their representative or their gut feeling to shape their views on the issue. For some Americans nuclear energy does not even show up on their political radar anymore. The implications for climate security are predominantly positive in that the production of nuclear energy causes very little carbon emission compared to the production of traditional energy sources. However, the main argument against nuclear power, the problem of nuclear waste disposal, is also compelling. Scientists have made strides towards safer solutions to nuclear waste management such as deep geological disposal and space disposal. It is difficult to know whether nuclear power will find a permanent place in energy production or whether renewable energy technologies will eventaully render the nuclear solution passé. In any case, when weighing the pros and cons in today’s problems of energy and climate, nuclear power still seems persuasive as source of large scale, base load power in terms of climate security.

Water Wars - or Water Riots?

2010-10-15T14:45:00.006-04:00

Today is 'Blog Action Day 2010', and this year, bloggers around the world are writing about water. To join in, I've put together a post on how water insecurity had led to conflict around the world. I've also added their 'widget' to the bottom of the page for this weekend only - why not sign the petition?

Oropoi, Kenya - Photo courtesy IRIN

In the security sector, water security is sexy as an issue because of the perceived threats of interstate conflict over shared water supplies, like rivers or lakes. Journalists love writing stories about 'water wars'. We've written about this on this blog before, like when we discussed the Strategic Importance of Water between India and China or whether India and Pakistan can share the Indus. Unfortunately for the hype of the journalists, projects like Aaron Wolf's Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database at the University of Oregon or Peter Gleick's Pacific Institute have shown that shared water supplies have been much more likely to help promote interstate cooperation than to provoke conflict. In fact, in our work on climate change and security at the IISS we have found widespread agreement among experts that the more pressing threat when we discuss water and conflict is its potential to create or exacerbate local civil and ethnic conflicts.

When looking at the causes of any conflict analytically, it is difficult to separate the effects of water shortages from other factors, like food shortages, migration, ethnicity, climate change or other issues that could drive violence. However, the impact of water over energy, development, agriculture, and livelihood makes it one of the most important factors. When water insecurity is mixed with urbanization, migration, pollution, radicalization, and a proliferation of small arms, it is not difficult to see a scenario resulting in conflict.

Water shortages or imbalances of water distribution can be driver of civil conflict in a marginalized society. In terms of terminology, ʹwater riotʹ is more appropriate that ʹwater warʹ. Examples of small‐level riots - some leading to deaths - can be shown in Nigeria, South Africa, Yemen, Egypt, India, and Ecuador. These water riots can be expected to show similar characteristics to the food‐related riots that erupted around the world in 2008. Areas of particular risk are those with strong ethnic or tribal divisions, and the effects of water riots may be to drive disaffected and marginalized parts of society away from areas of water stress.

While no one factor (like water, ethnicity, or unemployment) was able to correctly predict when these regions fell into conflict, changes in water security often can be enough to tip a region over the edge.

Floods Amplified by Military Activity in the Siachen Glacier?

2010-09-27T13:35:00.001-04:00

On Thursday, September 23 at a Congressional briefing of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, about 'Extreme Weather in a Warming World' the Pakistani Ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, blamed the extensive floods in Pakistan partly on military activity on the Siachen Glacier on the disputed border between Indian and Pakistan in Kashmir. He said that "Human Activity in the glaciers" is partly to blame for climate changes that brought on the devastating floods in Pakistan this summer. He noted that the Siachen glacier, in particular, is host to a heavy presence of both the Pakistani and Indian militaries, although he noted that Pakistan has proposed to demilitarize the area. The Times of India called this 'an unusual remark'.

The Siachen Glacier is the world's largest non-polar glacier. It is 43 miles long, and covers about 270 square miles (including its tributaries). Its heights are occupied by India, but it is claimed by Pakistan to be in their area of Kashmir.

The Siachen glacier has been at the heart of the long-running Kashmir border conflict between these two rivals. There was an excellent story from four years ago in Time Magazine, "War at the Top of the World" that detailed the conflict.

NASA's Satellite View of the Siachen Glacier

There is no question that the glacier is heavily militarized. It is home to the world's highest helipad, and both sides have brought troops. I confess that I haven't seen any scientific studies linking local human activity to changes on the glaciers. However, it would be logical that any local soot (black carbon) emissions could cause significant local melting. As I mentioned in my post about cookstoves, black carbon can cause melting on glaciers because its dark color warms the glacier in the sun, increasing its melting.

This is certainly an area that merits further study, and if these environmental concerns can help bring about a demilitarization of the volatile border, then some good could come out of this. On the other hand, I do wonder whether this was simply another example of a Pakistani officials going out of their way to antagonize India over Kashmir, as they have been threatening war over water.

Climate Change and the Millennium Development Goals

2010-09-24T12:12:00.003-04:00

This week, the UN General Assembly is meeting in New York. One of the key topics of discussion this week is a 10 year report on the progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. IISS intern Nathaniel Markowitz has written a guest post on how climate change is affecting the progress towards the MDGs.

On Wednesday, September 22, the Millennium Development Goals Summit concluded in New York. With its conclusion, the General Assembly adopted a resolution titled Keeping the Promise: United to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals. This document stresses that addressing climate change is a lynch-pin for “safeguarding and advancing” progress toward achieving the MDGs. It notes that climate change has resulted in “increased vulnerabilities and inequalities and adversely affected development gains, in particular in developing countries.”

While addressing climate change is important for realizing all of the MDG, the resolution observes that it is particularly significant for eradicating extreme hunger and poverty (Goal 1) and ensuring environmental sustainability (Goal 7). Several passages underscore the dramatic and immediate impact climate change has on food security. The document also highlights the threat climate change poses to preserving biodiversity and fragile ecosystems.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the precursor of the Kyoto Protocol) is invoked as the primary forum for negotiating a global solution. Specifically, it reaffirms the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” which recognizes that a country’s ability to mitigate its contribution to climate change is constrained by its capacities. [I don’t think I’ve ever seen a UN pronouncement that doesn’t include this phrase! - AH]

In addition to the outcome document, climate change was also addressed Tuesday at the roundtable on emerging issues. The discussion emphasized that “climate change will particularly impact land productivity and water availability, undermining rural livelihoods, with a disproportionate impact on women and vulnerable populations.” The panel recommends increasing investment in both renewable energy and developing resilience to climate impacts; encouraging implementation of a green economic growth strategy; and enhancing global and regional integration.

Here is a full update on how well the world is meeting the MDG targets.

Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

2010-09-21T18:29:00.000-04:00

Today in New York, Secretary Hillary Clinton announced the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves at the Clinton Global Initiative, hosted by her husband Bill Clinton. As well as the launch being an interesting bit of Clinton family cross branding, it could be an important new initiative that could improve the health of many poor people in the developing world - and help to reduce the threats of climate change in South Asia. As well as providing $50 million in US Government money for the project, the project boast support from across the public and private sectors.

A Cookstove in Mali

Cookstoves are the target for this project because of their danger and their ubiquity. The alliance estimates that 3 billion people rely on traditional cookstoves and open fires for their daily cooking. These cookstoves are harmful to the health of the people doing the cooking, because of the 'black carbon' that they emit. Black carbon can be defined as fuel that has not been completely combusted. It is a common byproduct from burning wood, as well as dirtier fuels like kerosene or low-quality diesel. You can literally see black carbon: it is the black smoke that comes out of dirty stoves or dirty vehicles. The project aims to replace dirty stoves with clean efficient cookstoves (like the one pictured below) in 100 million households by 2020.

Reducing black carbon is essential for human health. Then that black smoke gets in your lungs it can cause asthma, lung damage, and premature death. The Alliance says that it causes 1.9 million deaths annually, and women and young children are often the most affected.

Clean-burning Stove

Reducing black carbon is also a key tool for mitigating climate change. Though black carbon does not contribute to the traditional greenhouse effect - unlike Carbon Dioxide it does not go in the upper atmosphere -- it is extremely important for local and regional warming. Essentially, the black color of the soot can increase the heat level. When it lands on snow or ice, the darker color will absorb more heat and reduce the amount of glaciers or snowpack. This is very important in the Himalayas, because one of the biggest areas of cookstove usage is in the Indian Subcontinent. More detail can be found in this testimony to Congress by VS Ramanathan, a leading scholar on its effects.

One of the great things about reducing black carbon is that it has immediate effects: when it rains, the carbon is literally washed out of the sky, so this program can have big effects on climate in the short term.

Take a look at their website here: http://cleancookstoves.org/. It looks like it just went live today.

Climate, Weather and the Media

2010-08-05T10:44:00.000-04:00

There is an excellent blog post on the Economist's 'Democracy in America' blog about the media's handling of two weather events of the last year: the snowstorms and the Russian fires. He presents an analogy of coverage of weather as part of climate change to coverage of the WWII on the Eastern Front: a small German victory in 1943 shouldn't have been mistaken as anything other than the exception to the rule of "the Red Army advancing implacably across western Russia in 1943-44."

I've written two posts in the last two days about Russia's heat, so I don't have much more to say on that. In the western media, M.S. is right that there has been vanishingly little efforts to link the fires and drought to climate change, but the Russian media has not had such a problem: in fact, one commentator went so far as to blame the drought on the US military's 'climate change weapons'. I should also note that other countries similarly have no problem calling a single event evidence of climate change: Pakistan's Environment Minister recently said that global climate change is to blame for this year's flooding and heavy rains. Likewise, Nigeria's Environment Minister said “The effects of climate change have been wide spread in Nigeria."

Perhaps it is because of the tradition of presenting both sides in a news article that our media is reluctant to cover it in this way - but I think that is a false balance. As M.S. said, if something is part of a larger trend (as these droughts are) then it should be presented in that way.

In addition, there are new studies showing that abnormally cold weather in the northern hemisphere (as we had last winter) may actually be a factor of an abnormally warm arctic. If that turns out to be the case, last winter wasn't actually an exception, it was just another example of the trend: global warming is happening at an accelerated rate, and we should not expect the weather of the future to be analogous to the weather of the past.

DNI Nominee Clapper on Climate and Energy Security

2010-08-04T09:00:00.001-04:00

Via Marc Ambinder, I see that General James Clapper, the nominee to be the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), had some interesting things to say about the intelligence community's responses to climate change and energy security. Clapper's hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was held on July 20. The nomination is still pending, and there are reports that Senator McCain has placed a hold on the nomination, preventing a vote on the Senate floor.

In the section on national security threats, Clapper was asked to "discuss your view of the appropriate IC [Intelligence Community] roles and responsibilities with respect to the issues of climate change and energy security, and how well the IC has performed in these areas"

I will quote in full the answer he gave in writing to that question.

Global climate change could have wide-ranging implications for US national security interests over the next 20 years because it would aggravate existing world problemssuch as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutionsthat threaten state stability. Since the 2008 publication of the National Intelligence Assessment (NIA) on the national security implications of climate change, the IC has stepped up analysis and collection to look more in depth at climate change implications in individual countries and regions important to U.S. long term interests. The CIA has also created a center to provide all-source analysis on the impact of climate change on political, economic, military and social stability. It is also responsible for the MEDEA program which reviews and declassifies imagery for sharing with the climate scientific community.

Energy security has also been an important topic for Intelligence Community analysis and collection. To meet demand growth in next three to 10 years and reduce the risk of future price spikes, international and national oil companies will need to re-engage on major projects that were shelved when prices fell in late 2008. Within OPEC, Iraq is a bright spot for oil capacity expansion. Recent developments in the U.S. gas sector, primarily shale gas, have made the U.S. essentially gas independent for at least a decade or two, if not longer. The IC has for some time closely followed energy security developments, warning of longer term trends and highlighting potential opportunities for mitigating negative implications for U.S. national security.

After the hearing, General Clapper had more to say in his response to post-hearing questions, saying that "the CIA could serve as the DNI's Executive Agent on Climate Change." To me, it is unclear if this means that the re-organization of the intelligence community's response to climate change, which I wrote about in May, will mean that all climate issues will be concentrated at the CIA's "Center for Climate Change and National Security". It would be a shame if it meant that they closed the National Intelligence Council's office of Climate Change and State Stability, which has done some excellent work.

The Real "Climate Change Weapon"

2010-08-03T11:01:00.000-04:00

Following up on yesterday's post, which showed satellite pictures of the heat, drought and fires in Russia, I see that a widely-published Russian author, Andrei Areshev, deputy director of the Strategic Culture Foundation, alleges that has Russia's recent hot weather should be blamed on a US military program.

Here is his original article, "Climate Weapons. More Than Just a Conspiracy Theory?", and here is the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty article: "Russian Scholar Warns Of 'Secret' U.S. Climate Change Weapon."

This is a laughable conspiracy theory, and should be dismissed out of hand. In a conference which we held in early 2009, a questioner (who also seemed to be of the conspiracy-theory set) asked whether climate change could be used as a weapon. Our panel, consisting of speakers from the military, diplomatic, and intelligence professions, concluded that it would be very unlikely that climate change or carbon emissions could be used as a weapon. However, they did say that geoengineering does raise some particularly difficult geopolitical problems. Others have raised similar concerns about manipulating the climate and weather, through man-made geoengineering.

Though we can dismiss Areshev's argument out of hand, we should not underestimate the power of the argument underneath it. Areshev is wrong that the US Military is intentionally manipulating the climate by using the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) or some sort of space-based laser weaponry (which he claims is deployed on the X-37B, pictured at left). However, as the recent report from NOAA stated, it is 'undeniable' that the planet is warming, and that the decade 2000-2009 was the hottest globally on record. And, as the IPCC's 4th assessment report stated, "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20^th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations." The largest historical emissions of greenhouse gases come from the United States, and the US is currently the second largest current emitter (recently overtaken by China).

As I wrote yesterday, you can never say that any one event is caused by global warming -- we have always seen drought and extreme weather -- but you should expect more extreme weather events like this. If, for the sake of argument, we say that this drought is caused by man-made global warming, then we can say that the US is responsible for at least part of that warming. Of course, so also is Russia, China, Brazil, India, Europe, and others. All industrial and industrializing countries share the responsibility for deploying this 'climate weapon' over the last century.

As the effects of climate change become more apparent, I believe that we will see more cases of blaming the US (or China) for climate change, even if it is simply added to a long list of grievances agricultural protectionism, globalization, colonialism, and others. Earlier this year, we saw Osama bin Laden accuse the US of causing climate change. At the time, I wrote: "this leads to a sort-of conspiracy theory of climate change, whereby the emissions of the US and the rich world has purposefully doomed the poor world to an unending series of disasters." I think we should expect to see more of these accusations being made, though it would help their credibility if the accuser blamed US industry and transportation, not some James Bond-type space laser.

Russia's Heat, Drought, and Fires - As Seen from Space

2010-08-02T16:58:00.000-04:00

As the old saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words, and in this case a sequence of pictures shows exactly what's happened this summer in south western Russia, around the Volga River, in the region immediately north of the Caspian Sea. NASA's Earth Observatory satellites do an excellent job of showing views of major events as they happen.

Land Surface Temperature Anomaly, July 4-11 2010

First, at left we see a global map that shows temperature anomalies for July 4-11, as compared with the same dates from 2000 to 2008. These are the dates of the heat wave here on the US East Coast. Note the extreme dark red in South Western Russia, stretching from approximately the Ukraine border through Russia' Volga region, and in to Kazakhstan. The extreme red indicates temperatures of 12 degrees C (about 21 degrees F) above the average from last decade. Indeed, on July 11, Russia's hottest temperature in history was recorded in Yashkul, at 44.0°C (111.2°F).

Second, at right, we see a satellite vegetation index image, that shows the damage done to plants and agriculture around the Volga river (pictured running through the center). For location reference, Ukraine is in the bottom left portion of the map, with Kazakhstan in the bottom right. In no area of this map is there any green, which would indicate above average vegitation. The darkest red areas show a reduction by over half. Note that this region is one of the main breadbaskets of Russia, and in some areas over 50% of the crop has already been lost. Potential losses from this area have driven wheat futures past $7 a bushel today, taking this grain's prices 67% above June's nine-month low.

Finally, at left, we see the satellite photo of the predictable consequences of heat and drought: fire. The Volga River is labelled, and we see a haze of smoke extending across the entire region, completely covering Nizhiniy Novgorod. Fires across Russia have killed at least 40 people so far this summer. Today, President Medvedev declared a state of emergence in 7 regions across Russia, including Mari El, Ryazan, Mordovia, Vladimir, and Nizhny Novgorod (which are in this picture).

The US National Intelligence Council, in its report on the national security implications of climate change in Russia, says that Russia's agriculture will become "more vulnerable to droughts and other extreme weather" over the next decades as global warming takes hold. To add the usual caveat, you can never say that any one event is caused by global warming -- we have always seen drought and extreme weather -- but you can say this event is an example of what we should expect global warming to do.

A Warming World

2010-07-29T17:15:00.000-04:00

The Economist has a very clear and compelling chart up today showing how the world is warming. This chart is taken from NOAA's just released report on "The State of the Climate, 2009". The report was released yesterday, and it says that global warming is "undeniable" and that the 1990's were the warmest on record. The chart below shows that unambiguously.

[Source and Credit: The Economist]

World Day to Combat Desertification Celebrated

2010-06-17T11:34:00.002-04:00

Today is the World Day to Combat Desertification. Though this may not get the attention of such days as Flag Day (Monday), Chinese Dragon Boat Festival Day (yesterday), or Father's Day (this coming Sunday), this is an important subject that deserves our attention. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) entered into force in 1996. It calls for international cooperation to combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought.

The process of changing grasslands into desert can be incredibly destructive to the societies that live there, and there is clear evidence that in extreme situations, it can cause conflict. The best example of that is in Darfur. Jeff Mazo explains how this happened in an excellent chapter in his book "Climate Conflict". Darfur can be delineated as a conflict between agriculturalists and pastoralists. As rainfall decreased, and the Sahara expanded, these two groups came into conflict over land rights. This led to the beginning of a destructive war. As quoted by Mazo's book, UNEP said "There is a very strong link between land degradation, desertification and conflict in Darfur."

Warming in the Arctic to Cause Colder Winters

2010-06-11T15:58:00.000-04:00

In an ironic twist, a new study shows that rapid warming in the Arctic will make the weather in Northern Europe and Eastern North America much colder. This was the weather pattern that prevailed in December and January of the past winter. The map below, from NASA, shows that temperature were much higher (red) than normal in the high Arctic, while much lower (blue) in Eurasia and North America.

At the International Polar Year Science Conference, currently taking place in Oslo, Dr James Overland of NOAA presented a study that says that a warming of the arctic will have significant impact on winter weather in Europe, Asia, and North America. In fact, Dr Overland said "The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic."

The loss of Arctic sea ice has long been seen as one of the areas that will have major feedbacks on a changing climate. However, so far as I know, the focus of worries about those feedback has been that a (darker colored) ice-free ocean would absorb more heat than the (lighter colored) ice does currently. This would cause the Arctic to warm, and would prevent the re-building of ice. According to Dr Overland, this is occuring, and that will cause the current warming to be permanent. However, this is the first study I've seen that supposes any effects on global weather patterns of a warming Arctic, and it is disturbing.

Last year, Time magazine ran an article "Is There a Climate-Change Tipping Point?" which said that before we hit a tipping point that the earth would see what was called 'squealing'. I'll quote directly from the article:

In climate terms, squealing may involve increased variability of the weather — sudden shifts from hot temperatures to colder ones and back again. General instability ensues and, at some point, the center ceases to hold. "Before we reached a climate tipping point we'd expect to see lots of record heat and record cold," says Carpenter. "Every example of sudden climate change we've seen in the historical record was preceded by this sort of squealing."

These tipping points - which we won't know about unitl after they've passed - are scary. Rapid, sustained changes in the climate are impossible to predict, and as I've said before, uncertainty should worry us.

Of course, the fact that global climate change could cause record levels of snowfall and cold is a level of complexity that will struggle to make it through the ADD political-media crowd. No points for guessing who will build the next igloo on the Capitol lawn. If it weren't so important, it would be funny that a symptom of a rapidly changing climate is being used as evidence that the climate isn't changing.

An Aside into Domestic US Politics

2010-06-10T11:05:00.002-04:00

I have spent very little time on this blog delving into the US political debate about climate policy. Frankly, in the short to medium term, it doesn't matter very much for security policy what any nation does. Most scientists say that we're locked-in for the next 30 years or so with an escalating concentration of carbon and the warming that will accompany it, no matter what any of us do. Of course, it is very important for the long-term that the world comes together and figures out a way to reduce our emissions before we boil ourselves.

All of that is a long introduction to say that today, the US Senate is going to vote on Senator Murkowski's proposal to block the EPA from regulating carbon. This looks to be the kick-off of the long-awaited debate about climate legistion. However, with Senator Graham pulling away from the climate bill (which he and his staff helped write), it looks like there's little chance of real legislation this year to put on a price on carbon

One of the frustrating things about working on climate policy in the US is the creeping feeling that the American public doesn't really believe that what you're doing is important. Last October, for instance, we saw a Pew poll that said that only 57% of Americans believe that climate change is happening, and only 36% believed that it was "because of human activity". So, it was encouraging for me to see Jon Krosnik's Op-Ed in yesterday's New York Times "The Climate Majority". His contention is that polls on climate change have asked questions that are needlessly complicated, and that skews results.

The results of his poll showed that 74% of Americans believe that the planet has warmed over the past century, and 75% said that "human behavior was substantially responsible for any warming that has occurred." This is backed-up by a Washington Post-ABC News Poll that says that 71% of Americans say that the federal government should "regulate the release of greenhouse gases from sources like power plants, cars and factories in an effort to reduce global warming".
However, Americans are not as excited to do anything that means that they will have to pay for it. I'll quote directly from Krosnik's article:

"Fully 86 percent of our respondents said they wanted the federal government to limit the amount of air pollution that businesses emit, and 76 percent favored government limiting business’s emissions of greenhouse gases in particular. Not a majority of 55 or 60 percent — but 76 percent.

Large majorities opposed taxes on electricity (78 percent) and gasoline (72 percent) to reduce consumption. But 84 percent favored the federal government offering tax breaks to encourage utilities to make more electricity from water, wind and solar power.

And huge majorities favored government requiring, or offering tax breaks to encourage, each of the following: manufacturing cars that use less gasoline (81 percent); manufacturing appliances that use less electricity (80 percent); and building homes and office buildings that require less energy to heat and cool (80 percent)."

All of this says that Americans want action on climate change, they just don't want to pay for it. This goes along with the continuing line of polls I've seen that says that Americans want fiscal discipline and to reduce the deficit, but they strongly oppose reductions in any specific spending programs or any tax increase.

More after the jump --

I have long supported a cap-and-trade program, and I still do. I buy into Tom Friedman's argument that you need to put some sort of price on carbon, and that will spur vast new investments into clean technologies. However, apparently when Americans hear 'price on carbon' they think 'tax on me'. So, though market-methods, like a carbon tax or a cap and trade might be the most effective way to change behavior and reduce emissions, politically its much easier to have the federal government (the EPA in this case) simply tell buisnesses what they can and can't do.

EPA regulation also has the political virtue that it does not require a vote in the Senate. The thing is politicians love to have the opportunity to have an issue that they don't actually have to take a difficult position on. That way they can tell different audiences different things about their position, without anyone actually yelling at them. A Senator hates to be put on the spot with a 'yes or no' question: he is happiest when he can sound smart to his constituents in a 10 minute speech, but no one can tell which side he acutally supports.

Luckily, I think you can go a long way towards reducing emissions from power plants, deterring new construction of coal power, and promoting energy efficiency through EPA regulation alone. Businesses will continue to hate it, and command and control regulations, by their very nature, won't be as economically efficient as a price on carbon would be. However, it will be a step. Once the public grows accustomed to it (and the consequences of a warming planet continue to become clearer), then we can revisit it in a few Congresses and put a price on carbon. In the meantime, we may even have continued our reductions in emissions.

We all have been talking about not losing out to China on making a green economy, but their governments 'green' policies have been the definition of command and control.

So, today, the Senate will vote on Murkowski's bill. It will fail, then some sort of 'energy bill' will pass later this year. However, it will be mostly toothless, because there's no money available: Congress has now forsworn deficit spending, but - as we saw above - the public hates new taxes, so there's not much money available to subsidize anything. Climate change is the first long-term challenge of the 21st Century. We weren't going to fix it and be done with it this year anyway, so we will just have to make sure we come back to it every year.

[UPDATE: the Economist's Democracy in America Blog has two very good posts on the incoherence of recent polls: we want action on deficits or climate change, but we don't want to pay for it.]

Pacifc Islands Growing - But can that really continue?

2010-06-03T13:14:00.001-04:00

Foreign Policy's Passport blog has a quick post, "Pacific islands are actually growing" linking to a new study from the University of Aukland saying that 80% of Pacific Islands have grown or stayed the same size of the last 60 years. The article in question, titled "The dynamic response of reef islands to sea level rise: evidence from multi-decadal analysis of island change in the central pacific" was published a couple of weeks ago in "Global and Planetary Change".

According to the authors, Pacific Islands respond to rising sea levels (an average of 2 mm per year over these 60 years) by rising along with the sea. They do this by growing their coral reefs and capturing sediment. Tuvalu, a country widely expected to be the first to fall beneath the waves, has expanded in size over these 60 years, according to the study.

If only this meant that we don't have to worry about entire nations slipping beneathe the waves anymore! Unfortunately, there is evidence that we should not be complacent about this. Of the accelerating amount of carbon emissions being pumped into the atmostphere, about 50% of it is being captured by the oceans. A chemical reaction of the increased carbon with elements in the seawater is causing the oceans to become more acidic, and that acidity is killing coral reefs. So, we should not be so sanguine as to expect that what has worked to preserve these islands over the past 60 years of slow sea level rise will also work in the forthcoming 60 years. We should also be aware that there is an increasing threat that sea level rise will be much faster than the 2 mm per year.

Last year, I blogged about the UN resolution, proposed by 12 Pacific island states, about the national security effects of climate change. The Maldives and Tuvalu have been at the center of international political action against climate change, and they have done good work. I worry that this study will be used by those opposed to climate action as a way to sideline them from the debate. I think they still have some persuasive arguments to make that they remain at risk. We shouldn't stop sending the filmmakers, campaigners, and politicians to the Maldives or Tuvalu yet.

IISS Conference: The Global Security Implications of Climate Change

2010-05-26T14:58:00.001-04:00

I've reprinted below the Press Release for this Friday's Conference on Climate Change and Security. I would encourage everyone to watch online on Friday!

The International Institute for Strategic Studies’

Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security presents:

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) is pleased to announce the capstone conference of the Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security (TDCCS), entitled The Global Security Implications of Climate Change, on Friday, 28 May 2009, from 09:00 to 17:00hrs at the European Commission’s Berlaymont Building in Brussels (Schuman Room, 200 Wetstraat / Rue de la Loi Brussels, Belgium). Attendance is by invitation only, or with prior approval.

Laurence Graff, Acting Head of Unit for International and Inter‐Institutional Relations, DG Climate Action, European Commission, will deliver the Opening Address. Other featured speakers include Sir Gordon Conway, Professor of International Development, Imperial College London and Jamie Shea, Director of Policy Planning at NATO.

Senior IISS experts, including Nigel Inkster CMG, Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risks, Adam Ward, Director of Studies for the IISS and Jeffrey Mazo, Managing Editor of Survival and IISS Research Fellow for Environmental Security and Science Policy, will moderate the panel discussions. Panel topics include: (1) Adapting Water Security to a Changing Climate; (2) Energy Security; (3) Climate Change and Conflict; and (4) Security Planning for a Changing Climate.

Media covering this event are requested to contact the IISS-US in advance to schedule interviews and arrange provisions for technical requirements. The conference will be streamed live online at: http://scic.ec.europa.eu/str/index.php?sessionno=1023# .

A full agenda, including all confirmed panelists, is listed below.

House Intelligence Committe Hearing on Global Climate Change

2010-05-25T09:39:00.002-04:00

Via the Politico's Morning Energy Blog, I learned that today (Tuesday, May 25), the Subcommittee on Intelligence Community Management of the US House Representatives' Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence will hold a hearing on Global Climate Change. The hearing will be closed, so I don't have much information on it.

I would speculate that the hearing will look at how the Intelligence Community is arranging its resources to look at climate change. Currently, both the CIA and the National Intelligence Council (NIC), within the DNI, have programs looking at climate change. The NIC's unit, on climate change and state stability is led by General Rich Engel, who has spoken at IISS events in the past. The CIA's unit - which survived a motion to defund it last October - is called "The Center on Climate Change and National Security", and is tasked with providing "support to American policymakers as they negotiate, implement, and verify international agreements on environmental issues." Previously, the Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence had also had an Energy and Environmental Security section, led by Carol Dumaine (video of her hear) but that was unfortunately closed up earlier this year. The IISS-US held an event titled "Security, Climate Change and Uncertainty: Rethinking Strategic Risk” with Carol late last year.

Clearly, with the closing of the Department of Energy's climate unit, and the opening of the CIA's climate shop, there is some reorganizing going on. This will also be a good opportunity for the intelligence community to demonstrate to Congress the utility of making the climate security argument. It is difficult to avoid the political debate about cap-and-trade, but they should get beyond that debate. There is a real need to look at national security impacts of climate change, and the adaptation measures that can avoid it.

Water, Climate, and Conservation in Spain

2010-05-20T11:26:00.001-04:00

The Economist has a good, short video on the problems of water usage, agriculture, and water in Spain. It talks about how farmers in Valencia and Andalucia have been tapping water supplies from the wetlands in Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park, south of Madrid. Last summer, the peatlands in this park began to self-combust, because it had become so dry.

Though there would seem to be little chance of civil conflict over these water supplies, it is important to note that there certainly is political conflcit between farmers and conservationists looking to preserve national parks. The video also briefly touches on regional ideas to transfer water from the Ebro river in the more lush north of Spain to the drier regions in the south and west. Though it doesn't discuss it, Spain has a history of regional disunity, and I should think that a large part of the reason that infrastructure to transfer water has never been built has been the mistrust that Catalonia and the Basque regionsit have for both the central government and the southern regions. If Spain was not a well-established Democracy in stable Europe, it is not hard to see how a similar situation -- further stressed by climate changes -- could lead to conflicts.

Climate and Security Linkages- Friday May 14

2010-05-14T17:24:00.000-04:00

Reuters picks up an article saying that intrusions of salt is killing crops, and driving migration in southern Bangladesh. Rising sea levels, a retreating water table caused by the overuse of wells, and storm surges from Cyclones Sidr and Aila (in 2007 and 2009) have combined to cause a large problem for Bangladeshi farmers.

Unrelated to climate change, and certainly a natural phenomenon, but I just thought it was cool. This is a time-lapse video of celand, Eyjafjallajökull - May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo. I came across it on Ezra Klein's Wonkbook. Very cool.

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull - May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

Climate and Security Linkages

2010-05-12T15:56:00.000-04:00

This week, I'm trying a new technique: the link drop. I'll put together a list of all the links which I think are interesting and related to climate security (so no baseball links). The idea is to quickly get a broader cross-section of news and views, as well as to engage more closely with other blogs.

The Economists' "Free Exchange" blog shows that the US' oil dependence causes a large part of the annual trade deficit.

The US Climate Bill
Andy Revkin's "Dot Earth" blog has a discussion of the recently released "American Power Act" from Senators Kerry and Lieberman. He thinks, if passed, it would prove to be a 'nudge' towards clean power-- but little more.

Nicole Allen at The Atlantic says that the bill isn't going anywhere, ironically because of the oil spill. Dave Roberts at Grist agrees - unless Obama gets involved (I think that's right). Senator Kerry thinks this is the best chance: "our planet can't wait for the perfect bill. We need to get a really good bill now". The Chamber of Commerce hasn't decided if they support or oppose the bill - which is a small victory for Kerry-Lieberman

NBC Nightly News on Climate Security

2010-05-11T14:50:00.001-04:00

Via the Institute for Environmental Security, I found this report from NBC's Nightly News about climate change and security issues, focusing on Egypt. Though it is from five months ago, I think the reporter, Jim Maceda, does a fairly good job of listing the major concerns about how climate will impact security, particularly rising sea levels, diminished water supplies in transboundary rivers, and climate migrants. It also includes brief interviews with some of the most high-ranking voices arguing about climate security, including Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former CentCom commander and and Admiral Neil Morisetti, the UK government's lead on climate security.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I do have a couple of quick concerns with the report. First, the reporter blithly say that countries upstream on the Nile from Egypt are building dams that will harm Egypt's future water supplies -- without saying that the fact that there are so few now is a testament to the power that Egypt wields over its upstream neighbors. Second, he mistakenly quotes from a report from "aid group Alert Interntional" -- of course it's International Alert (here is the report mentioned). Other than those, though, this seems to be a fairly robust, if quick, overview of current thinking on climate security

Arguing the link between Climate Change and Security

2010-05-07T18:20:00.000-04:00

I've noticed some concerns by critics about how climate change is linked to security. A common thread I've heard is that military and security planners are just looking for another threat to justify their existence (and their budgets). Stephen Walt went along this line last summer. I saw it in the comment section of Keith Kloor's blog, where there was some skepticism about the link between security and climate change. I think that skepticism is misplaced, even if someone is skeptical about the science.

Military and security planners don’t plan for what they know is going to happen – that would be pretty easy. We have to have the foresight to look for and be able to adapt to any number of contingencies. Part of that planning has to include uncertainty. It even has to include planning for events that are very low probability, if the impact is high enough. Outside of the climate sphere, this is why we spend money on missile defense. We don't know that Iran or North Korea is going to get a ballistic missile capable of reaching the US, but the potential damages of it are so high, that we're working hard on technology to intercept that threat.

Another example: the intelligence community was rightfully pilloried for not being prepared for a terrorist threat eminating from Afghanistan. Should Osama bin Laden have been the sole focus of US intelligence in the 1990s -no. But, planners should have had the foresight to look at the possibility and put in place some prudent preventative actions.

So, even if climate skeptics don't believe the computer models or the climate projections, they would have to be 100% certain that they're right in order to justify not planning for the insecurities caused by extreme climate changes. So, the burden of proof should be on climate skeptics to prove that there is no chance that the climate will change, not on the climate scientists. Using Dick Cheney's measurement, if there's even a 1% chance that the climate scientist are right, then you have to act, if only prudently.

When a skeptic says that projections are worth nil — that’s not really true. They’re worth it as a potential contingency that should be looked at. In fact, we should probably prepare for much worse than those projections, on the assumption that if you prepare for the worst, you will be prepared for anything.

In short, we don’t have the luxury of operating with 100% certainty. Strategic planning is looking at and preparing for all of your “known unknowns” — the things we know we don’t know – and trying to minimize the dreaded “unknown unknowns”.

A Debate About the Relevence of 'Climate Security'

2010-05-05T10:48:00.000-04:00

Keith Kloor has an interesting thread of debate going on his 'Collide-a-Scape' blog about climate security, which he started with interviews with Cleo Paskal and Geoff Dabelko. Before these interviews, Keith says:

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.

Keith: just for you, I pulled up a slide from a Power Point Presentation that David Robson, a special advisor on energy and climate to the Scottish Government, showed at an IISS workshop on the Impacts of Climate Change on Food Security. You can see it at the left.

Of course, I also should suggest that Keith gets in touch with the IISS' Research Fellow on Environmental Security, Jeff Mazo, who's new book "Climate Conflict" was just released. He has a full chapter about Darfur, about which there has been significant argument about whether it should be called a 'climate war' as Ban Ki-Moon has said it was. (buy the book!)

The problem we face is that nuance doesn't sell books, nuance certainly doesn't get you on TV, and politicians and their staff don't have time to get into nuanced arguements. I've been approached many times by various Senator's staff saying 'my boss is very interested in using the climate-security argument'. They want to use it because the concept of 'security' brings images of soldiers - the most respected establishment in America - and it allows you to paint an enemy - after all we wouldn't have gone to the moon if the Soviets hadn't put Sputnik up first.

Unfortunately, this leads to some distorted arguments. For example, the least nuanced ad (embedded after the jump) I've seen on this issue -- saying that the US' failure to pass climate legislation = material support for Iran -- was rejected by Fox News because it was "Too Confusing". This is the political and media world we live in, and you can't ignore it. So long as politicians, the public, and the media live in the short-term, notions like climate security are difficult to get readers (as Geoff Dabelko says in the comments on Collide-A-Scape) unless you make some strong and difficult to prove linkages.

Personally, I think the political and economic argument that was advanced in the Stern Review applies to the climate security argument best: relatively small, prudent actions now can act as insurance against the threat of potentially large and destabalising consequences -- whether to security or to the economy -- in the future.

Russia, Ukraine, Natural Gas, and the Black Sea Fleet

2010-05-03T17:08:00.000-04:00

This is a guest post from our IISS-US intern, Madeleine Foley, talking about the recent agreement between Russia and Ukraine on gas transit and Crimean Naval Bases. As Europe continues to rely on Russian Gas to meet its climate targets, this will continue to remain an important focal area for climate and energy security.

On 21 April, Ukrainian-Russian relations took an uncharacteristically pragmatic turn with the signing of two loosely linked agreements that, together, have become known as the gas-for-fleet deal. The first of the agreements, signed in Kharkiv, Ukraine by Russian President Dimitri Medvedev and Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, extends Russia’s lease of one of its oldest and most politically important naval installations, the Black Sea Fleet, at Sevastopol in the Crimean Sea for 25 years until 2042. The symbolic value of the Black Sea Fleet (see picture) to Russians is important because maintaining an installation in Ukraine is a nod to Russia’s presence in Ukraine, going back to Catherine the Great's 18th Century wars to gain access to a warm water port on the Black Sea. It is also an acknowledgment of Russia’s sense of propriety over the large Russian population in Eastern Ukraine. The material value of the lease extension is questionable, however, when compared to what Russia offered Ukraine in exchange.

In return for the lease extension, the second agreement established what amounts to a $40 billion discount on natural gas over 10 years. Ukraine’s role as a bridge and energy transit route between Europe and Russia put it in a precarious, but critical position over the last decade. The Timoshenko-Putin years were characterized by tense relations between Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine’s perceived abandonment of their long standing ally to the east in favor of deeper economic, political and ideological ties with the European Union provoked Russia to end a long standing gas subsidy to Ukraine, quadrupling the price from $50 to $230 per 1000 cubic meters last year.

In a press conference following the signing on April 21st, the two Presidents framed the agreement as a first step in repairing their very important relations. Ukraine will free up $40 billion for public spending over the next 10 years and Russia will maintain its presence in the Black Sea and be able to conduct business through Ukraine with fewer restrictions. Moreover, the boost that the Ukrainian economy will receive from Russia’s $40 billion investment will make it eligible for additional IMF loans for the first time since its $16 million loan in 2008.

Opposition to the deal has been fierce throughout Ukraine, however. Upon adoption of the agreement in the Ukrainian Rada this week, a brawl broke out between nationalists and proponents of the deal complete with eggs, head locks and smoke bombs. Similarly fervent displays of the democratic process were noticeably absent in the Russian Duma, where the agreement was adopted without issue.

Domestic politics aside, the Ukrainian opposition seems to be suffering from a vacuum of self-awareness. By attempting to shirk off its responsibility as a ‘bridge’ between the EU and Russia, it is making itself less valuable and less attractive to its Western friends and allies. Ukraine’s role as a political, economic and physical bridge between the EU and Russia is not a temporary charge, it is a geostrategic reality. Until it learns to grow legs, pick itself up and plop itself down somewhere between Denmark and Germany, Ukraine should get used to playing the role of mediator. This latest agreement is less a sign of President Yanukovich’s willingness to drag Ukraine kicking and screaming into the arms of Mother Russia than an indication that he recognizes Ukraine’s unique geostrategic limitations. The Ukrainian opposition should recognize the potential benefits of Russia’s willingness to pay so handsomely for continued recognition of its political and historical legacy in Ukraine.

Updated - Jeff Mazo's Climate Conflict Presentation

2010-04-27T11:14:00.002-04:00

Updated from the previous post, I've been able to get the embed code for Jeff's presentation on his Adelphi Book Climate Conflict. Its worth watching, and the book is worth buying.

Launch in external player

Jeff Mazo answers questions on "Climate Conflict"

2010-04-27T10:55:00.003-04:00

Last week, on Wednesday 21 April, 2010 Jeffrey Mazo, the IISS' Research Fellow for Environmental Security and Science Policy, launched his new Adelphi Book, Climate Conflict: How Global Warming Threatens Security and What to Do about it. I wrote a brief review of the book a few weeks ago, and it should be required reading for anyone interested in the security effects of climate change. His book takes a historical view of how past climate changes have affected security.

I've attempted to embed the video of the launch event, including Jeff's Q&A below. If your browser does not support the embedded video (mine is giving me trouble), you can watch the Launch and the Q & A Session by clicking through those links.

This is the Q&A Session, which I have embedded. Due to technical difficulties, I haven't been able to embed the presentation. I'd suggest that you click through the links above, and watch it in Windows Media Player.

Launch in external player

New Options For Kyrgyz Engagement on Energy Security in Central Asia

2010-04-16T17:00:00.002-04:00

Below is a guest-post from IISS Intern Madeliene Foley, looking at the Energy Security and geopolitical implications of the coup in Kyrgyzstan.

The recent coup in Kyrgyzstan came on the heels of the completion of the Asia Gas Pipeline in December 2009, a project that is unprecedented in scale and extent of collaboration among regional powers. The coup is still causing reverberations throughout Central Asia -- a region increasingly dependent upon uninterrupted energy transit routes to China, Russia, and the West. Though it has no oil or natural gas, the now deposed President Bakiyev would have done well to leverage Kyrgyzstan’s strategic location to frame itself as a critically important transit route between oil-rich Kazakhstan and gas-rich Uzbekistan and their fastest growing customer- China.

Instead, the pipeline, which traverses Turkmen, Uzbek, Kazakh and Chinese territory, noticeably bypasses Kyrgyzstan. This can be attributed to early difficulties and missteps in negotiating favourable contract terms. However, Kyrgyzstan’s failure to market itself as a desirable transit route means that is has not cashed in on the recent growth in Central Asia’s energy sector, even though a glance at a map would show that it should be particularly well placed to receive some of China’s increased investment.

China’s interests in the region are an attempt to secure oil and gas supplies to continue and sustain its steady economic growth. It currently depends on sea access for 90% of its imports, which presents a critical threat to its energy security. The Asia Gas Pipeline and a second Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline will expand inland fuel transport capacity well beyond the current 10%. Securing crude oil is a top priority in Chinese energy policy as daily imports have grown from 2005 levels of 3.5 million barrels-per-day to 9 million bpd today.

Though they share a common border, Kyrgyzstan has no foreseeable plans to deepen its economic and infrastructural ties with China. Given that Kyrgyztsan has had difficulty meeting its own domestic power needs in the past, it would seriously behove the interim government to reach out to China on pipeline construction as they have to the US on automatically extending the Manas air base contract. The new Kyrgyz regime has thus far promised to cooperate with the US government in securing Manas, but there has been little speculation of how the coup will affect Central Asia’s energy industry.

Moreover, as Central Asian and Chinese leaders have grown closer and established deeper diplomatic and economic ties, Kyrgyzstan has remained isolated (note that Bakiyev is the notable Central Asian leader not pictured with Chinese President Hu Jintao). Skilful manoeuvring on Kyrgyzstan’s part now could secure its place as an integral transit route as Georgia has in the recent past. Kyrgyzstan’s best option at present is to reinvigorate its relationship with neighbouring states. Establishing a friendlier and more pragmatic regional outlook will both reassure neighbouring governments and lay the foundations for meaningful progress on energy infrastructure development in the future.

"The next war between India and Pakistan could be fought over water"

2010-04-14T17:21:00.000-04:00

In a follow-up to my blog post earlier today "Can India and Pakistan Share the Indus?", I note that Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba earlier this week called for India to stop its 'Water terrorism'. Water has long been a cause of tension between the two nations, but if one of the men most wanted by India takes it up as a cause, this issue could quickly become more dangerous.

Saeed's remarks came on Sunday in Lahore, where he said:

The next war between India and Pakistan could be fought over water if India does not stop its ‘water terrorism’

Clearly, inflamatory language like this will not help the two nations to have a calm dialogue.

Can India and Pakistan Share the Indus?

2010-04-14T12:45:00.001-04:00

If this headline from Reuters is true "Rivers a source of rising tension between Pakistan and India" then we may be in trouble. When you read the article, however, you see that it is mainly speculation about the future of the Indus, if climate changes change the river's flow. This is an issue that the IISS has looked at very closely, most recently at a workshop titled Conflict and Competition over Changing Water Resources.

As the article quotes a representative from Pakistan's Foreign Affairs Ministry:

High levels of poverty and population density also render both countries particularly vulnerable to climate change-related water shortages, said Munawar Saeed Bhatti, of Pakistan's ministry of foreign affairs.

Of the world's major cross-border rivers (the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Mekong, the Brahmaputra, and the Indus), this border is potentially the most dangerous. The border is shared by two historic, nuclear-armed, enemies who have fought 3 wars in the last fifty years. Many have persuasively argued that the Indus Water Treaty is a prime example of cooperation succeeding over conflict between neighbours sharing water supplies, but it has not been tested by reduced water flow. The Indus Water treaty assumes a constant, predicitable flow, and if the sustanence needs of Pakistan are not met, it is concievable that interstate conflict would ensue.

The article also hints at ways to avoid conflict and adapt to changes. Better water management in both Pakistan and India could significantly reduce the amount of water needed for agriculture, and prevent much of the waste. Preventing water loss from poor irrigation could help solve the problem, or at least push it back.

Gwynne Dyer's new book Climate Wars argues that we could see a conflict within the next 20-30 years over the Indus. He made a similar case at our workshop last July, mentioned above. After the jump is a detailed analysis that came from that event.

We analyzed the major cross-border rivers of the world to see if changes in river flows caused by a changing climate could induce conflict. The danger of major cross-border rivers, countries controlling the headwaters could have incentives to hoard water as a scarce and valuable resource, while downstream countries have incentives to use military and economic power to enforce their will on upstream neighbours. However, in the river basins of the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Mekong, and the Brahmaputra we found that conflict is unlikely because one state – which we termed the basin hegemon in this workshop – is much more powerful than its neighbours.

Only the Indus is shared among two states that can be defined as strategic peers: India and Pakistan. Pakistan – since before the partition in 1948 – has relied on the largest contiguous irrigation system in the world for its food production. The impact of global warming on agricultural production there could be dramatic: planners in the subcontinent estimate that every temperature increase of 1°C will correspond to a 10% decrease ingrain production. Climate change could also cause a reduced water flow from shrinking glaciers or a weakened monsoon. Expanding populations in both India and Pakistan will put great pressure on each nation to control the headwaters of the Indus. Though unlikely, a nuclear confrontation over water is plausible.

Linking Energy Security and Climate Change

2010-04-09T16:39:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago, the IISS held a workshop on climate change and energy security. During this workshop, there was a strong debate about whether climate change should be linked to energy security. Below is a summary of the debate, and some proposed solutions that arose out of it.

Energy Security and climate change are often linked in public debate. An example of that is the Truman Project's "Operation Free" (see their ad here). However, it is not self-evident that climate change will necessarily lead to energy insecurity, or vice versa. National energy security was generally defined during the workshop as a secure supply, open access, and protection from interruptions of that supply. No one at the conference espoused full energy independence (autarky) as being equivalent to energy security. The CNA has showed in their "Powering America's Defense" report that dependence on foreign energy supplies – particularly limited petroleum resources – presents a serious threat to security because it weakens international leverage, jeopardizes the military, and entangles the US government with hostile regimes.

Climate change direct threats to energy security, particularly to existing energy infrastructure. Examples of disruptions to energy supplies that could cause disruptions to energy supply include hurricanes damaging offshore oil rigs, droughts reducing hydro power availability, melting permafrost undermining pipelines, or heat waves causing rivers to be unusable to cool nuclear reactors. Some argue that these are minor threats in the energy security debate, and therefore climate change’s effect on energy security should not be portrayed as a strategic issue. On the other hand, we should be aware that there is great scientific uncertainty about the magnitude of climate change and whether there are any projected ‘tipping points’ that could lead to rapid, dangerous changes. What we don’t know, especially about variability, leads to more questions, and that should worry planners. Because small changes in climate could lead to large and unknown effects on complex and interrelated systems, like energy supplies, we should be very careful about predictions. If planners could predict events with 100% certainty, there would be no risks to security from climate change: we would choose to either adapt to or avoid the worst threats.

There is a sharp debatedivided on how closely related concerns about climate change were to concerns about energy security. The CNA (mentioned above) directly links climate change, energy dependence, and national security, stating that continued reliance on fossil fuels creates “an unacceptably high threat level from a series of converging risks” that include conflicts over fuel resources, destabilization driven by ongoing climate change, and threats to critical infrastructure. However, others argue that climate change is as much a security risk as other transnational factors, like religion or ethnicity, and governments should not raise it to the same priority as energy security. Portraying climate mitigation policies as ways to increase energy security could then be seen as a willful manipulation of the public.

Though there is sharp disagreement about how closely related the problems of climate change and energy security were, it should be clear that the solutions were linked. Even if we accept the premise that energy and climate security are two major and separate problems, they have the same solution: a move to a low-carbon economy. Energy security, particularly in the United States, means reducing dependence on oil imports. Petroleum products are largely used to transportation, which accounts for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. A focus on reducing oil usage in transportation could have important impacts on reducing emissions and energy security. The military can have an important role in fostering this switch, particularly to low-carbon transportation fuels. It is already pioneering new biofuels and efficiency measures. It can contribute to these as a technological innovator and early adopter. Fostering a change that would create a stable energy base and a secure climate is possible, but it requires strong leadership; nations should look to their militaries to help. Though energy security and climate change may not be technically connected, the problems have evolved together, and their solutions must run in parallel.

Energy, Climate, Security, and Optics in Obama's Speech

2010-03-31T18:11:00.000-04:00

Today, President Obama gave a speech (which you could have watched live here on this blog) that was billed by the White House as a speech on "Energy Security and Independence". I'm not sure that the actual announcement today that the US will open more of its Outer Continental Shelf to offshore drilling was that important, and I'll leave it to others to argue about how the policy change will do much good or bad for climate legislation.

However, the optics of today's speech are probably the most important part of it. By holding the event at Andrew's Air Force Base, in front of a (clean, green) F/A-18 'Green Hornet' fighter jet the administration is signaling that they are going to treat energy security and climate change policy as the security threat that it is. The President was speaking directly to a group of servicemen who probably will all spend at least one tour of duty in the oil-rich Middle East as a direct result of our energy dependence. Hopefully, this is only the beginning of a series of Presidential events that will show how climate change and energy dependence create threats to our national security.

It is important that this 'securitization' of energy and climate policy is not done cynically. If the Administration has decided that the only way to pass a comprehensive climate bill is by wrapping it in the flag, then it is not worth doing. However, we know, through the good work that the CNA corporation has done in preparing it's “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change” and "Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security" reports that this is an issue that is critically important to our national security. Since the first report, released in 2007, other important reports from the National Intelligence Council, the DoD, and others have comprehensively linked American national security to our dependence on foreign energy, and the looming instability of climate change. However, the CNA's reports also show a good way forward. They suggest that the achieving energy security is possible but it requires strong leadership. The Green Hornet on display behind the President today shows how DoD can be a leader by becoming an early adopter and a test bed for new technologies, especially low-carbon fuels.

President Obama today showed that he gets this linkage:

"For decades we’ve talked about how our dependence on foreign oil threatens our economy -– yet our will to act rises and falls with the price of a barrel of oil. When gas gets expensive at the pump, suddenly everybody is an energy expert. And when it goes back down, everybody is back to their old habits.

For decades we’ve talked about the threat to future generations posed by our current system of energy –- even as we can see the mounting evidence of climate change from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf Coast. And this is particularly relevant to all of you who are serving in uniform: For decades, we’ve talked about the risks to our security created by dependence on foreign oil, but that dependence has actually grown year after year after year after year."

The question now is whether he can sell it to the American people.

President Obama's Energy Security Speech

2010-03-31T11:08:00.004-04:00

Below is a live stream of President Obama's speech on energy security. Notice how we've gone fully in the securitization of energy policy. The President is announcing the new energy plan in front of a fighter jet. I think it looks like a Navy F-18, but this is an Air Force Base, so that can't be right. Post in the comments, if you think I'm wrong.

From the preliminary reporting I've read about the speech, I'd say that offshore drilling must be a very important part of our national energy policy. However, it is just a part, that must include renewable energy, natural gas, and new technology. We can't solve our energy security problems by simply drilling offshore, but politically I would say that breaking the taboo on offshore drilling is an important signal that the US government is willing to take the difficult steps to really address energy security.

I'll write more after the speech.

UPDATE: it appears that the White House's stream is only audio. If you want video, CNN has it here:
http://www.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.html?stream=stream1

UPDATE #2: it was a Navy F/A-18. However, it was a 'Green Hornet' that had been modified to fly on a 50/50 mix of jet fuel with biofuel.

UPDATE #3: Now I've got the White House's Video successfully embedded.

New Movie: "Climate Refugees"

2010-03-26T09:40:00.001-04:00

Last night, I attended a screening of the new movie "Climate Refugees" at the UK Embassy here in Washington. The film was an impressive travelogue to all of the 'hot spots' that are at the frontlines of climate change. They visited Bangladesh, Tuvalu, Northern Alaska, New Orleans, inland China, and Darfur. It provided stark visual evidence of the role that a changing climate is having on these places. As one person in Tuvalu said, "nature has turned against us". For those of us involved in climate policy every day, it doesn't present anything new, but it provides stunning visual confirmation of what we're working on. Also, its clear that the film started out to talk about environmental migration, but as the interviews progressed, they began to look at climate change as a driver of conflict, which we've wrote about many times over the past year.

Also, the interviews that the filmmaker, Michael Nach, was able to pull together impressive. He brought together political leaders like John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, and Newt Gingrich to talk about it. He also was able to gather a litany of leaders from the climate & security field. Its nice to see people whom I've cited, worked with, emailed with, and admired involved in this work. These included Koko Warner, Paul Ehrlich, Lester Brown, Stephen Schneider, Rajendra Pachauri, Peter Schwartz, and others.

Though the film does tend towards the more alarmist view on how many climate refugees there will be, I think it does it in a measured way. As we've said on this blog before, no one is responsible for climate refugees, in the current international system. There are some proposals on how to bring them into the international system, but there seems to be little global appetite to apply the Geneva Conventions to environmental migrants.

Films like this play an important role in the political debate -- far greater than think tanks and blogs can -- and I hope that it gets as wide a viewing as possible. I've embedded the trailer below.

UPDATE: Appartently, the Natural Security Blog was there last night too.

New Adelphi Book: "Climate Conflict" by Jeff Mazo

2010-03-25T17:56:00.000-04:00

Jeff Mazo, Mangaing Editor here at the IISS, has just come out with his new Adelphi Book, Climate Conflict: How Global Warming Threatens Security and what to Do About It. I had the pleasure to read earlier drafts of this, and I'm pleased to recommend it.

Jeff takes a historian's view to climate conflicts, which I think is appropriate. He looks at how changing local and regional climates have affected human history in the past, using Easter Island the Viking settlements on Greenland as examples of how a changing climate can cause a society to fail. He then brings the argument into the modern day by persuasively saying that Darfur is the first modern climate-change conflict. Like any conflict, there is a complex array of causes, but he makes a good case that conflict

The book carefully talks about the tenuous relationship between climate change and conflict. Though its always tempting for us to hype the link between climate change and conflict, as I've written before, the is a danger to overstating the climate security argument. A key line in the book is:

"Over the long term, changes in water and food availability will be major drivers of insecurity, but in the medium term the trends will be as much a matter of incremental, quantitative change as of qualitative step change. Increased variability, especially increased frequency and severity of extreme events, will be the most significant factor..."

I would encourage any readers to buy Jeff's book today for the low, low price of 9.99 pounds.

Congressional Testimony on Energy Security and Climate Change

2010-03-24T18:28:00.000-04:00

Yesterday (March 23), the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on pending nominees to senior positions within the Department of Defense. Sharon Burke was nominated for the position of Director of Operations Energy Plans and Programs. Sharon is currently the Vice President at the Center for a New American Security, where she works in their 'Natural Security' section . CNAS' blog, Natural Security, is a must read for those of us working in this area.

This is a new position at the DoD that I believe was created in the same legislation -- authored by then-Senators Clinton and Warner -- that directed the DoD to include an analysis of the security threats of climate change in the QDR, which I discussed earlier this year when the QDR was released.

You can watch the webcast of the hearing here. I've flipped through a good bit of it, and I was impressed by her exchange with Senator Inhofe, who can be a tough questioner of people whome he deems to disagree with him on climate change. Also impressive is that she was introduced by former Senator Warner, who has been extremely active on energy security and climate security in his post-Senate career. The Wilson Center's New Security Beat blog and CNAS's Natural Security blog have also written about her hearing.

On an additional note, Sharon and I are both members of the Senator Hagel alumni association, though we never overlapped in our time there, and I believe her time there was relatively short. Just another example of the strong alumni group throughout the Washington area. I hope that she is quickly confirmed, and I wish her well at her new job.

Nord Stream Moves Forward

2010-03-22T13:43:00.000-04:00

Below is a guest post from IISS-US intern Jonah Friedman. I think he lays out the political and economic importance of the Nord Stream pipeline. It will be interesting to see if this progress will push forward Nabucco as well. -Andrew

The Nord Stream natural gas pipeline received a multi-billion dollar funding package from a group of banks this week. These funds will allow the consortium of partner companies (Gazprom, BASF SE/Wintershall Holding GmbH, E.ON Ruhrgas, and Gasunie) to begin the first stage in the pipeline’s construction in April. The controversial project is intended to be complete by 2012 and will eventually supply some 55 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe per year. Natural gas is cleaner than coal or oil, and will constitute a growing share of Europe’s energy consumption as it strives to limit its contribution to climate change. Nord Stream thus plays a role in helping Europe meet its carbon emissions reduction targets.

This is a major step forward for Nord Stream, which in recent years has been hamstrung and delayed by the need to secure the approval of various Baltic countries, as well as by environmental concerns. These latter obstacles were often seen as smokescreens for some states to hide deeper political and military fears. Sweden had been particularly concerned that the pipeline might pose a threat to that country’s security – either by serving as a platform for Russian intelligence-gathering efforts, or because it could be used a pretext for Russian military intervention in the Baltic in order to defend the pipeline from terrorist attacks and the like.

Moreover, Nord Stream is being portrayed as a nightmare for some of the European Union’s newest members. The Baltic states and Poland face the prospect of being completely bypassed – both physically, and in terms of Russia-EU energy relations. These states have a particular interest in preventing the construction of Nord Stream, given than the pipeline is meant to remove transit states such as them from the equation. Suggestions that these states have used environmental objections to mask their true motivations are therefore not surprising.

Although the project may now move forward more smoothly than it had in the past, new difficulties may lie ahead. Exploitation of Russia’s Shtokman gas field, which is meant to be one of Nord Stream’s sources, has been delayed. Gazprom, announced in February that the opening of the field would be further postponed by three years, and some doubt whether it will ever open. This leaves the future of the project – and the composition of Europe’s future energy supply – still somewhat in doubt.

A Climate Threat: Icebergs?

2010-03-02T18:01:00.000-05:00

NASA has some of the most dramatic pictures of melting in the Antarctic that I've seen. This series of pictures, reproduced below from NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows the progression over 20 days from February 7 until February 27 of the collision of an iceberg, called B-9B, with the Mertz Glacier Tongue. Apparently this glacier had been stable and immobile for the last 18 years. Melting this year, however, has caused it to begin to move. Below we see the consequences, as the 1400 square mile B-9B runs into the Mertz Glacier and creates an 1150 square mile iceberg. Put together, at 2550 square miles, these icebergs are about the size of Sri Lanka.

Here, on February 7, we see B-9B (on the right) colliding with the Mertz glacier. Note the beginning of a crack on the left side.

Here, on February 20, we see that the crack has fully broken the new iceberg away from the Mertz Glacier.

Finally, on February 26, we see that the two glaciers have begun to float freely.

Joe Romm put a post up on ClimateProgess by Nick Sundt of WWF detailing the iceberg collision. Sundt focuses on the implications of this for Antarctic wildlife, particularly Emperor Penguins. This is an important question, but is not really relevant to security practitioners.

The reason I'm interested in icebergs is for the security of shipping. Though you can never attribute a single event like this to climate change, we should expect that events like this will become more frequent as the world warms and ice melts. Therefore, we could have a seemingly paradoxical effect that global warming will cause more glaciers as the ice melts. As you can see in the image of global sea-lanes below (from Science Magazine), glaciers in the Southern Ocean are not a great threat to shipping. The Southern Ocean will remain some of the most treacherous waters on the planet, and we shouldn't expect shipping to go here, no matter how warm the world becomes.

However, a glance at the map will show how busy the North Atlantic Route is for shipping. Greenland is melting much faster than the IPCC predicted only 4 years ago. Though we may not see glaciers the size of Sri Lanka coming off Greenland, we should expect that some of that rapid melt will cause icebergs to break off Greenland. Approximately 10-15,000 glacier are created each year off Greenland, but the majority of those melt prior to threatening shipping. The US and Canada Coast Guard run the International Ice Patrol to monitor these icebergs and prevent them from threatening shipping. However, should more and larger icebergs become normal, then we could expect them have a tougher job, requiring greater resources, and ultimately increasing the cost of shipping. I'm not sure how much of a threat this is, but it seems likely to be growing.

New Climate Doctrine of the Russian Federation

2010-02-23T19:01:00.001-05:00

This is a guest post from IISS-US intern, Jonah Friedman

Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev held a meeting last week to investigate ways in which his country can reduce its emissions by 25% by the year 2020. He drew attention to the Climate Doctrine of the Russian Federation, produced in December 2009, which noted the potentially negative results which climate change may have on Russia. A US National Intelligence Council report from April 2009 detailed several of the ways in which Russian lives will be negatively affected. These range from economic problems as a result of crop failures to deepening political and socioeconomic tensions.

Despite these and other reports, however, there are many in Russia who believe that climate change can only be to Russia’s benefit. They argue that warmer weather will both extend the growing season for crops as well as provide easier access to the country’s vast natural resources, which are often located in frozen tundra. Russia’s arctic flag-plating escapade in 2007 shows how eagerly some Russians are awaiting the melting of the polar ice caps.

It seems unlikely that President Medvedev’s reduction goals can be met unless these perspectives can be bridged. Russia is now the world’s third [or fourth (depending on how you count)] biggest polluter and its willingness to commit itself to reducing its emissions will have a major impact on the success of global efforts to combat climate change.

Senator Hagel on Climate Change and Security

2010-02-19T17:56:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, former Senator Chuck Hagel spoke at Georgetown on "Climate Change After Copenhagen."

The event was a very interesting format: much more interactive than many. The Senator gave a clear and coherent view of where he thinks climate change legislation is going in the Senate (not very far) and what the future of international efforts to deal with climate change will be.

He clearly talked about how climate change should be treated as a threat to national security. In fact, it was his legislation -- along with Senator Durbin -- in 2007 that began the push towards asking the Intelligence Community to produce a National Intellegence Assessment of the threat of climate change.

Audio of the event can be heard here.

More Security Agencies Calling Climate Change a Threat

2010-02-03T18:04:00.002-05:00

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.

Bin Laden and Climate Change

2010-02-02T17:41:00.001-05:00

Late last week, Osama Bin Laden came out with a new audiotape accusing the US for causing climate change. He says: "Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury - the phenomenon is an actual fact." The following statement could as easily have been spoken by Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, or other anti-capatalists:
One of the themes that ran through the Copenhagen Conference was the global divide between rich and poor, north and south. As many studies have borne out, climate change will do greater harm to the poorest countries. Because these countries also have the least responsibility for historical emissions, they feel they yet again being harmed by forces beyond their control. This theme links climate change to a series of other grievances that the poor world holds against the rich, like agricultural protectionism, globalization, colonialism, and others.

"However, George Bush junior, preceded by [the US] congress, dismissed the [Kyoto] agreement to placate giant corporations. And they are themselves standing behind speculation, monopoly and soaring living costs. They are also behind 'globalisation and its tragic implications'. And whenever the perpetrators are found guilty, the heads of state rush to rescue them using public money."

Taken to its extreme, this leads to a sort-of conspiracy theory of climate change, whereby the emissions of the US and the rich world has purposefully doomed the poor world to an unending series of disasters. Any attempts by the US to push binding emissions targets on poor countries (even China) is said to be a conspiracy to keep the developing world poor in an effort to pre-empt competition. We saw this argument used at the end of Copenhagen by the Sudanese negotiator Lumumba Stanislas Di-Aping when he said:
“It is asking Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dependence of a few countries, tt is a solution based on values that funneled six million people in Europe into furnaces.”

For the last several years, when analysts have discussed the security threats of climate change, we've talked about it “as an accelerant of instability or conflict” or as a new competition over scarce energy, water, or food resources. Perhaps we should now begin to look at it as a new area of grievance between the rich and the poor. If droughts in Sudan are blamed on global warming, and Sudanese blame the US for the emissions that caused global warming, then a logical next step would be for the Sudanese to engage in action that would cause the US to stop emitting. Potential actions could include taking oil company workers hostage or even direct acts of terrorism. A good way to defuse this animosity would be for the rich world to fully engage in a global climate treaty that is seen as fair, equitable, and just around the world.

But -- we shouldn't wait for Osama to then throw down his weapons if the Copenhagen Accord turns out to work: he'll just find something else.

US Department of Defense: Climate Change is "an accelerant of instability or conflict"

2010-02-01T17:51:00.000-05:00

Today, the Defense Department released its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The QDR lays out the anticipated policies and priorities of the Department of Defense for the next four years. It is a strategic document, that paints broad strokes about future plans, force structures, and anticipated global threats. This is in contrast to the annual budget (also released today), that gives hard numbers and entails real spending. Under legislation authored in 2008 by then Senators Clinton (D-NY) and Warner (R-VA), the QDR was mandated to look at how climate change will impact the military. The QDR states:

Climate change and energy are two key issues that will play a significant role in shaping the future security environment. Although they produce distinct types of challenges, climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked. The actions that the Department takes now can prepare us to respond effectively to these challenges in the near term and in the future.

According to the QDR, climate change will affects the military in several ways: first, the effects of global warming (espeically sea level increases and more sever weather) will directly threaten military bases and deployed forces, second, it will it will “act as an accelerant of instability or conflict” that could cause the military to fight and deploy in more unstable areas around the world, and third, the Arctic will emerge as a new theater of operations.

After the jump, a clip of Undersecretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy talking about how the QDR addresses climate change.

Chile's Constitution: Water to be a Matter of National Security

2010-01-26T17:57:00.003-05:00

A proposal by Chile's outgoing President, Michelle Bachelet would put an amendment to the Chilean Constitution saying that acces to fresh water is a matter of national security. According to the article "CHILE: Water a Matter of National Security" by Daniela Estrada, from the Inter Press Service:

The legal text recognises that freshwater, which is lacking in the Chilean north and abundant in the south, has become a "scarce good" and that its availability is "a matter of national security," much more than fossil fuels, which can be imported from other countries.

The proposed amendment would undo a law of 1981 (the Water Code) which effectively privatised Chile's fresh water reserves. The government's proposal states: "with the implementation of a new Water Code, an imbalance resulted between the common good and the interests of a few individuals, an imbalance that must be corrected." Therfor, this reform seems to be more about a conflict between public and private use of water. Apparently, under Chilean constitution, once a good is declared a priority of national security, then the government can break contracts or expropriate private property to more effectively or equitably distribute that good.

Talking about the economic or social impacts of such a policy are beyond the scope of this blog. However, it leads to some interesting conceptual possibilities, if climate change alters the Chile's water supplies. The article states: "Chile is a world leader when it comes to freshwater reserves in the form of glaciers. According to the latest inventory by the government's water agency, there are more than 3,500 glaciers, covering some 20,000 square kilometres." If those glaciers all melt (I won't venture to say a date: that has gotten some in trouble recently), then you could see the government (and military) taking charge of water supplies in order to ration them among competing groups: mining, hydro power, agriculture, sewage, and drinking water would all have claims on scarce resources. If the government does not fairly apportion rights to water, its fairly easy to see how conflict could develop over these water rights, either against the government or between these stakeholder groups. Just labeling water as a 'matter of national security' does not make these decisions any easier.

An Analysis of Copenhagen

2010-01-20T18:00:00.000-05:00

Just to start: I'm back to blogging on climate change and security issues, after an extended hiatus over the holidays.

The IISS recently published an analysis, which I wrote, in our Strategic Comments web-based magazine called: "Copenhagen Accord faces first test". Overall, my assessment from a few weeks after the conference is decidedly more upbeat than my 'first assessment' written the day after the event concluded in a cloud of acrimony.

As I write in the article:

"The Copenhagen Accord should not be judged by the events in two weeks in December. Its success will be judged by national responses over the next decade."

The first test for whether countries are serious about addressing this issue will come on January 31, when national commitments are due to the UN.

Though some bemoan that Copenhagen did not produce a binding treaty, I think that's a good thing. US Senators, much like Chinese Communist Party Officials and members of India's parliament, do not like international bodies telling them what they can or cannot do. I would contend that the only countries where you may have members of legislative assemblies asking to be bound by a supranational treaty are Europeans, because they've gotten used to it. I contend that the Copenhagen Accord, because it is non-binding and calls for voluntary commitments will be more effective than a binding treaty with mandatory commitments (a-la Kyoto) could be. James Bacchus, writing in Forbes notes that this was how the GATT began in 1948, and it succeeded in its goals of dramatically increasing international trade.

Instead of a long-term binding treaty, negotiations can continue to adjust to changing scientific, climactic, and political realities under the Copenhagen Accord. These can be negotiated through processes like the G-20 and the Major Economies Forum. Ronald Bailey at Reason magazine contends that this closely resembles the program that the Bush administration followed, and I would contend that by 2007, the Bush Administration actually had a pretty good climate policy in place. The trouble was, nobody stopped to notice by then: the narrative had already been written.

The Glaciers of the Himalayas are still melting -- we just don't know how fast

2010-01-19T18:22:00.000-05:00

Today, we've seen several articles saying that "World Misled over Himalayan Glacier Meltdown". From my first reading of these articles, it appears that the IPCC relied on sketchy sourcing and little evidence for its claim in the 2007 IPCC report that the Himalaya's could be entirely ice-free by 2035.

The rivers that begin with meltwater from the Himalayas are the source of fresh water for around 2 billion people in Asia. These rivers are important for transportation, farming, fishing, tourism, and religious worship. Because they cross heavily militarized borders, my blog and others writing about climate change and security have cited this area as a potential source of conflict.

It is important that everything we do in climate policy be grounded in sound science. However, it is also important that security planners look beyond the lowest-common-denominator science, as its practiced by the IPCC. We need to look at worst-case scenarios: if you plan for the worst, you'll be prepared for any eventuality.

In fact, as I've written previously, the melting of the glaciers isn't even the most important part of the story. Instead, a reduced snow melt, brought on by a reduced Indian Monsoon, is the biggest danger. While glacier melt at a somewhat predictible (slow) rate, annual snowmelt is the largest driver of seasonal flooding. The size of this snowmelt is the largest driver of this flooding, and that is predominantly driven by annual precipitation. We simply do not know how climate change will affect the monsoon.

Similarly, this row with the IPCC shows that we simply don't know how climate change will affect the Himalayan glaciers. We know that many have retreated significantly. For instance, the famous Khumbu glacier, from which climbers begin their ascent of Mt. Everest, has retreated by over one kilometer in the last 50 years. In fact, according to the blog From a Glaciers Perspective "Everest Base Camp has actually dropped from 5,320m to 5,280m since Hillary and Tenzing first set up camp for their ascent there more than fifty years ago." The Guardian had an excellent series of photos earlier this year, showing before and after pictures of retreating glaciers. (I've used one of their photos above) Photos don't lie: some glaciers, at least, are melting!

The answer here, is that we need better science about how glaciers are acting and will act. We also need better science about how climate changes will affect precipitation in the region. What we don't need are the typical voices saying that this small (but significant) problem with the IPCC supposedly invalidates all other pronouncements from them.

Copenhagen - First assesment

2009-12-19T08:01:00.000-05:00

The meeting has concluded in Copenhagen. On first glance at the 'accord' that summit 'took note of' it looks to be an agreement that is actually workable.

It sounds as though the deal was unacceptable to the G-77, the UN group of least developed countries which was being led at the negotiations by Sudan. For that reason, the UN was not in full agreement. The G77 revolt was being pushed forward by leaders like Chavez from Venezuela and Mugabe from Zimbabwe

It seems to me that having an agreement that all the developed countries, plus the major developing countires can come together on is far more important than having agreement that every nation in the UN. Honestly, it is not that important to have the entire world on board. If an agreement includes all of th G20, then 80% of the world's emissions are covered. Why should we bow to pressure from Mugabe and Chavez? They were only orchestrating a shakedown of the US and Europe anyway, and their nation's emissions are not significant enough to warrent their ability to block.

There seems to be little agreement on when to come back to Copenhagen for a meeting that would seal a deal. The Copenhagen Accord will the end of the flawed UN process. But, it may also mark the beginning of a process that will actually work to reduce emissions and prevent dangerous global warming.

Copenhagen - A Test of Global Cooperation

2009-12-18T14:57:00.001-05:00

Unfortunately, I've been too busy this week to post much about what's been going on at the COP15 in Copenhagen, but I'll just say that the outcome of this conference (still uncertain at this time, an hour after it was scheduled to finish) is very important for long-term cooperative security.

Climate change presents a true (if long-term) threat to global security, and only through collective action can the world address it. The costs, when spread over the long term, are not insurmountable, but the political problem is who will pay? That is what Copenhagen has been all about. If we cannot come together as a global community to meet this challenge, it is difficult to see how we can confront the other 21st Century challenges that will also require global coordination.

If cooperation can be achieved in Copenhagen, I think there's a good chance that we can set a precedent for long-term global cooperation on many challenges, including food security, financial regulation, trade imbalances, regional security, and counterterrorism. On the other hand, if Copenhagen fails, and the world is unable to come to any agreement on how to insure against climate change, then I think there's a good chance that the global order will gradually fray as nations move towards a more competitive - versus cooperative - framework for international relations.

Action on Security in Copenhagen - from an Unlikely Source

2009-12-10T19:21:00.000-05:00

One of the key points about 'national security' is the defense -- and even the very existence of -- your sovereign land. On Wednesday (Dec. 9) in Copenhagen, it sounds like the group of 'Small Island States' had their time to demand forthright and agressive action on climate change. They fear that there will be nothing they can do to defend their land if unmitigated climate change melts the ice caps and causes rising sea level.

On moral grounds, their argument is nearly inassailble. Rising sea levels will wipe out their land, forcing their entire populations to either move or sink.

This action is very interesting, because it shows a possible split between the small, vulnerable developing nations -- like the island states and the poorest least developed countries -- and the larger and more politically important developing nations -- like China, India, and Brazil. The large states want to prevent a legally binding treaty that would place a tight cap on emissions (implying that they would have to cap their rapidly growing emissions). Meanwhile, the small, poor states (with emissions so small that they don't really care about caps) are pushing for a treaty that would place tight caps on emissions and prevent dangerous climate change from threatening their very existence.

Ian Fry, Tuvalu's delegate said: "Our future rests on the outcome of this meeting"

The Economist has a very good write-up of the action on their 'Correspondent's Diary' from Copenhagen. The BBC has a good article on this, and their correspondent has a very enlightening blog post on the emerging split in the developing country 'G-77' group.

After the break, click for a YouTube video of the protests from Copenhagen looking at the protests in favor of Tuvalu.

Opinions about Climate

2009-12-09T13:40:00.000-05:00

The Op-Eds are coming fast and furious now that the Copenhagen conference has begun. I wanted to quickly post links to a couple of important and noteworthy ones.

Tom Friedman - "Going Cheney on Climate"
Tom Friedman gives his usual clear-eyed perspective on why its in our national interest to act on climate change. He uses the risk-aversion argument of the 'precautionary principle' (which I've said as a reason to act on climate change), as the best argument. He then uses Dick Cheney's arguments about weapons of mass destruction to make the case that conservatives should also feel that way. Here, I think Friedman is dead right: if the skeptics are anything less than 100% sure that climate change is not a danger and is not man made, then we still have a duty to act. Even a 5% chance that abrupt and disruptive climate change was coming should be enough reason to act.

Mikhail Gorbachev - "We Have a Real Emergency"
Gorbachev gives his view in the Herald Tribune that fixing climate change will go a long way towards fixing many of the problems the world faces today. We focus too much on the short-term costs, without thinking at all about the long term threats of inaction. Gorbachev is one of the last real statesmen of our times, and its good to see him involved.

Sarah Palin - "Copenhagen's Political Science"
Sarah Palin decries the politicization of science by taking a political view of the science. I'm not going to go into this very much, plenty of other people have already had a go. The number of comments (2310 when I last checked) shows that the Washington Post knows who drives controversy and internet views. One thing to say, Ms. Palin should sit down with Senator Murkowski to talk about climate change: I think she would learn a great deal from the Ranking Member of the Senate Energy Committee.

International Alert's Dan Smith on Climate and Conflict

2009-12-01T10:38:00.004-05:00

I wanted to quickly link to a blog post written by Dan Smith, Secretary General of International Alert. He writes on the new Reuters climate change 'AlertNet' page. This post talks about the complexities of determining how and whether climate change can or has caused climate changes.

Also, below is an interview Smith gave with Al Jazeera's English language network. He talks about how interconnected development, conflict, and climate change really are. It is this complex web that makes it so difficult to predict conflicts from climate change.

Jared Diamond on Envrionmental Collapse

2009-11-30T18:04:00.003-05:00

This is an excellent lecture from Jared Diamond about the history of states collapsing due to environmental stress. Short summary: its not simple!

Stimson Center Video on the Mekong

2009-11-25T13:09:00.003-05:00

Via the New Security Beat, I cam across this excellent video from the Stimson Center about the implications of building new dams across the Mekong River.

Mekong Tipping Point from Henry L. Stimson Center on Vimeo.

Richard Cronin, who has a starring role in the video, is the author of a new article in Survival: Mekong Dams and the Perils of Peace (sub. required). While the video focuses more on the implications of the dams for fisheries, the aticle focuses on the debates between the nations that share the Mekong. There is an important climate component to this as well. Although the river is not dependent upon glacial melt for the majority of its flow (6% according to the WWF), during the dry season, this glacial runoff is important.

The European Model for Climate Change

2009-11-25T12:22:00.003-05:00

I have a new article up in the December-January issue of Survival. Its for subscribers only, but non-subscribers can read the first 500 words here.

This is a review essay of David Buchan’s book: Energy and Climate Change: Europe at the Crossroads (a steal at 25 pounds!). My argument is that Buchan’s book should be used as an instruction manual. Policymakers looking to set up aggressive action on climate change – either at the international or the domestic level – should learn from the mistakes and the successes of the EU. Though they’ve had their difficulties and false starts over the past decade in setting up an effective regime, Europe has finally succeeded in creating a climate policy that will allow it to meet its Kyoto targets.

For other important views on climate change in this month’s Survival, I’d suggest reading “Climate Change and Copenhagen: Many Paths Forward” by Paula Dobriansky and Vaughan Turekian.

REDD: Forest Conservation as a key part of Copenhagen

2009-11-19T12:48:00.009-05:00

Yesterday, IISS intern Isabella Santoro went to an event at the Center for Global Development on the UN-REDD program. Below is her report about it.

Yesterday, 18 November, the Center for Global Development hosted a seminar titled “Financing Forest Conservation to Combat Global Warming: Keys to Success at Copenhagen.” The event featured eight guest speakers. They focused on the impact of deforestation on global warming, including potential solutions to the problem, examples of successes, and areas of failure.

Deforestation accounts for roughly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions – more than the entire global transportation sector, second only to the energy sector. For some countries, especially major emitters like Indonesia and Brazil, deforestation is the primary form of carbon emissions.

At Bali in 2007, diplomats in the UNFCCC proposed the United Nations Collaborative Program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD) as a cost-effective and reliable measure to confront deforestation and climate change. The purpose of REDD is to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, so that more affluent countries such as the United States and other Western powers can provide a monetary incentive for developing countries to protect their forests as valuable carbon sinks. REDD has not yet been implemented, but it is expected to be part of an agreed framework that comes out of Copenhagen next month.

Nigel Purvis, President and Founder of Climate Advisers, spoke about the benefits of implementing REDD. He listed several advantages of REDD, saying it would: help mitigate climate change, provide a buffer from severe climate change, encourage countries to invest in climate adaptation, and create a monetary value for precious ecosystems in the poorest regions where there had been none before. However, there are obstacles and drawbacks to REDD. Deforestation is caused by many factors, including agricultural expansion, logging, infrastructure development and – most importantly – poor governance. Crystal Davis, an associate at the World Resources Institute, lists the following criteria as measures of good governance: transparency, participation, accountability, coordination and capacity. It is important to strike a balance between urgency, adequacy and equity when applying funding, as these can come into conflict with each other.

REDD will have to be applied in a timely manner, in support of local and sustainable practices, and with respect to the rights of the indigenous populations who rely on natural resources for survival. Manish Bapna, Executive Vice President of the World Resources Institute underscored this point, saying that we must make sure that developing countries are actually benefiting from REDD. The other main issue that must be confronted is mobilizing finance so that funding is applied in a reliable and predictable way. Too much money at one time can be counterproductive, because lasting solutions take time to implement. Funding should be stretched out over a longer period of time.

How can forest conservation be monitored on a global scale? Data collection remains scarce and often lacks context. Protected Areas of forests have shown to reduce deforestation. Nancy Birdsall, President of the Center for Global Engagement and David Wheeler, Senior Fellow at the Center presented their new and improved FORMA and CARMA programs. Forest monitoring for action (FORMA) developed a prototype system for monitoring deforestation in Indonesia by collecting satellite data from NASA satellites from 2005 to October 2009. Carbon monitoring for action (CARMA) provides a map detailing the carbon emissions of more than 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies in the world. Both interactive maps are available on CGD’s website. These programs are examples of ways to monitor both carbon emissions and deforestation on a global level so as to determine the actual effect of Protected Areas as well as the implementation of REDD.

So, the question becomes, will developed countries be willing to support the REDD agenda at the upcoming Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen? The science is clear: forest preservation must be a part of the solution if the global average temperatures are to be stabilized within two degrees Celsius. The United States and other Western powers stand to gain in every way from the global reduction of greenhouse gasses and they hold the key to making it happen. Providing financial incentives to reduce carbon emissions would promote global cooperation between developed and developing countries, protect poor and indigenous communities, spur global economic growth, and curb climate change.

(photo from Flickr, courtesy of Greenpeace)

A Return to Yesterday's Post

2009-11-18T16:31:00.004-05:00

I need to update my comments in yesterday's blog post. There have been two comments, each of which I should address in turn.

First, unintentionally mischaracterized Bernard Finel's take on the question of how climate causes conflict. Most of what he writes about in the post is the important point that anybody can cherry-pick information, using different dates to get the results they're looking for. The more important point, that climate change doesn't necessarily cause conflict, I agree with Dr. Finel about. I quote him below.

"The point isn’t that climate change causes conflict anyway. The point is that
climate change is likely to exacerbate existing conflicts. The end of the Cold
War was clearly a more significant influence on trends in conflict than climate
change has been thus far."

Suffice it to say, I agree with that statement. I must have I gotten caught up with arguing about the quoted material, and did not complete my thought process when composing yesterday's post. I hope that this corrects the record.

Secondly, James Jay Carafano (quoted in the Flash Point blog post) writes "dude the climate is always changing". Today's New York Times' Op-Ed piece "Ben Franklin on Global Warming" bears this out. I think he's trying to make the point that climate change isn't caused by human action (and I think he's on the wrong side of the science here). We don't go into the question of whether climate change is man-made or not around here, but from a planning and security perspective, that doesn't really matter. Climate change is likely to be a driver of conflict around the world (though far from the only one) in the 21st Century. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the security community to plan for it. More on this point in a later post.

Also, in hindsight, I was far too glib and condescending about Heritage's positions on climate change. Though I've often not agreed with them (but I very often do), I shouldn't have made such a statement without any support, and I've deleted it from the post.

Again: Be careful when saying climate causes conflict

2009-11-17T11:01:00.005-05:00

The Flash Point Blog has a recent post asking: Is conflict declining, even as global warming occurs? This is yet another example of oversimplifying the question. They cite James Carafano (a scholar from the Heritage Institute) as saying that conflict is going down while climate change is occuring.

I think Carafano ~~and the American Security Project are~~ is looking at this is in a way that is just too simple. No political scientist would ever claim that there is a direct 1-to-1 causational relationship with something that is as complicated as the causes of conflict. Clearly there are many things that lead to conflict, like economic dislocation, religious differences, class conflicts, or others. In science terms, there is more than one independent variable in this equation. However, climate change and environmental security is part of the equation. In fact, it is rightly called a ‘multiplier’ that can exacerbate all the other parts of the equation.

So, to say that climate change won’t cause conflict isn’t true, just like like saying that climate change will cause conflicts is also too simplistic. I’ve written about this before.

Also, its interesting to note that Carafano apparantly is conceeding that climate change is happening, by saying that ‘things have been getting better’ even as climate change happens.

Greenland Melting Faster

2009-11-16T17:15:00.005-05:00

A new study (subscription required) in Science shows that the ice sheets of Greenland are melting at a fast and accelerating rate. This is yet another example of how the latest science is showing that the effects of climate change are moving faster than even the worst-case scenarios of the IPCC's 2007 consensus report.

The report, based on satellite observations, states that the Greenland ice sheet lost approximately 1500 gigatons of ice mass from 2000-2008. This is about 0.46 millimeters per year of global sea level rise. And, the rate of loss is increasing. Since 2006, high summer melt rates have increased Greenland ice sheet mass loss to 273 gigatons per year (0.75 millimeters per year of equivalent sea level rise).

Importantly, this article appears to resolve much of the uncertainty about how much the ice sheet is melting. The article used two independent methods, one based on observations and the other on remote gravity measurements made by satellites. By getting these two approaches to agree, we can get a clearer, more precise view of what is actually happening. I have said before that policymakers are asking for better science. Unfortunately, its not pretty.

Whether we can keep the Greenland ice sheet intact will be an important factor in keeping Bangladesh, the Maldives, or New York above rising sea levels. The water contained in these ice sheets could account for 7 meters of sea level rise.

What I'm listening to: Climate Wars

2009-11-05T16:58:00.004-05:00

The Canadian Radio Network, CBC, has run a radio series, titled "Climate Wars" with IISS friend Gwynne Dyer as the host. I've only stumbled across this today, and am only through the first episode of the series. So far, I can attest that its a very strong and interesting program. He was able to get very strong interviews that read as a 'who's who' of imporant players in the climate security argument, including John Holdren and others.

I can't link directly to the radio program, but you can listen to it through the CBC's website, here.

A Little Humor

2009-11-05T10:04:00.001-05:00

It always helps to be able to laugh about things like rising sea levels flooding New York:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Formidable Opponent - Global Warming With Al Gore

http://www.colbertnation.com/

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

U.S. Speedskating

When did Al Gore get funny?

Lessons in Adaptation from the Western Sahel

2009-10-30T12:41:00.002-04:00

This is an interesting post from Isabella Santoro about positive lessons that can be learned from the drought in the Western Sahel in the 1970s and '80s for people interested in climate adaptation:

On Tuesday, 27 October, Oxfam America hosted a panel discussion on food security and climate change adaptation in the Sahel region of West Africa – a belt of land located on the Southern edge of the Sahara desert. The panelists included farmers, technicians and agricultural innovators from Burkina Faso and Niger who, together with NGOs, universities, and partnerships with private sectors, transformed a large portion of the Sahel desert into arable land. The West Africa Sahel region experienced heavy droughts in the 1970s and 1980s. Wealthier inhabitants relocated to areas with higher rainfall, but local farmers had little choice but to adapt to the harsh and changing environment. The successful adaptations included increasing tree density and practicing sustainable, environmentally friendly, and locally oriented agricultural practices, the farmers were able to transform an arid and windswept landscape into farmland.

One of the panelists, Yacouba Savadogo, is a farmer and community leader from Burkina Faso who learned valuable planting and fertilization techniques through a program sponsored by Oxfam in 1979. Yacouba’s land was transformed into a rich forest, which, in addition to increasing food production, also helped the local population adapt to the changing climate. Ever since then, he has been teaching other farmers in and beyond his community how to increase tree density and practice sustainable agriculture through “study visits,” where farmers observe his farming techniques and then apply them to their own land. Mathieu Ouedraogo, Director of the Africa Re-Greening Initiative, praised Yacouba’s work and stressed the importance of the next step, which is to export these practices to other parts of Africa and to build on the capacities of local organizations to increase food production.

Sakina Mati, also a farmer and community leader in the Maradi Region of Niger, made a similar contribution to food security and climate adaptation by working together with other women farmers in her village to increase tree density. She is now the project leader for six villages, each with more than three thousand inhabitants. She teaches the women how to protect trees, prune them, and conserve firewood so that it does not decay rapidly. These sustainable agricultural techniques have transformed five million hectares of desert into woodland and there are 200 million new trees in Niger. This has increased income for farmers by $300 million a year. Villagers used to walk five to ten kilometers in search of firewood, but now farmers can sell their surplus at the local market. This project has protected the land from wind erosion and increased food production for the entire community. “We are protecting nature for future generations,” stated Ms Mati.

Issa Martin Bikienga, deputy secretary of the Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), talked about the committee’s purpose and goals. CILSS was founded by USAID in 1973 and is comprised of nine countries that work together to strengthen strategy and policy formulations to promote food security, water management, and population control in West Africa. He called for greater financial support from USAID, saying that it is essential the US government continue sponsoring grassroots projects. Countries should build on local methods and resources to increase food security and adapt to climate change. It is thanks to this revolution in agricultural techniques that West Africa has been able to reverse the post-colonial trend of importing food and begin relying on their own land and produce.

Chris Reij, geographer and resource management specialist, said the stories of farmers like Yacouba and Sakina Mati are comparable to the biblical story of David and Goliath. Whether their opponent is a Philistine giant or global warming, all it takes to win the fight is skillful use of the tools at one’s disposal. Climate change threatens to undermine the food and water security of arid regions like the Sahel. This success story shows how local adaptation methods, combined with international funding, can help overcome the challenges looming for regions like the Sahel around the world.

Natural Gas Reserves

2009-10-30T11:32:00.002-04:00

Though not technically about the security effects of climate change, natural gas is becoming a key part of the energy future for the United States.

Natural Gas is often thrown into the same fossil fuel paradigm as oil and coal. For example, President Obama's recent speech at MIT said: "figuring out how to use the fossil fuels that inevitably we are going to be using for several decades, things like coal and oil and natural gas; figuring out how we use those as cleanly and efficiently as possible". This implies that natural gas is at the same level as coal or oil. It is not.

Natural gas burns cleaner than coal: it produces only about half as much CO2 as coal to produce the same amount of power, and very little smog-forming emissions. New finds -- what Daniel Yergin calls the 'Shale Gas Revolution' -- mean that we can produce more of our energy for electricity and transportation here, cleaner than we ever have before.

These new finds are not simply marginal changes. They are revolutionary. In June, the Potential Gas Committee (PGC), a US non-profit estimated US gas resources at the highest level in the committee’s 44-year history, a 35% increase over the last estimate published in 2007. They said that that abundant, recoverable natural gas resources exist within our borders, both onshore and offshore, in all types of reservoirs.

However, this has not yet seemed into the political debate. The Natural Gas industry has nowhere near the political clout of the coal industry in Washington, because it is newer, more geographically diverse, and primarily smaller companies. They are trying to increase their power, before the Senate debate, so that the US doesn't get stuck by the cap and trade bill into a long-term commitment to 'clean coal' (whatever that is defined as).

We need to seize upon this windfall by switching our baseload electricity generation to natural gas. These plants can be used as the perfect back-up to expanded renewable power, because they are qucik, cheap, and easy to turn on and off (unlike coal-fired power). We need to transition our heavy transportation (trucks) from diesel to natural gas, while transitioning our light transportation (cars) to electricity (which will be generated from natural gas). A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation says that you could reduce US emissions by about 1 billion tons (15%) of carbon per year with these two switches, which would be likely to save money.

Will Obama Attend Copenhagen?

2009-10-27T09:25:00.002-04:00

One of the big contentions going into December's Copenhagen meeting is how many heads of state will attend. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged to attend, in keeping with the priority level that his government has given to the issue.

Now, the Times of London is reporting that Lord Stern, who wrote the Stern Report in 2006, is saying that Obama must attend the meeting in Copenhagen. This article is the latest in a series of 'will he - won't he' articles that seems to have obsessed the Times and other British Papers.

The papers have probably taken their lead from British politicians: earlier this month, Ed Miliband, the British Energy and Climate Change Secretary, called on Obama to "save" the summit.

Examples of this trend include an October 20 article reporting that Obama "'may not attend" the summit, according to Todd Stern, the State Departments special envoy on climate change. This was followed by a report on October 24, also in the Times that Obama would "almost certainly" not go to Copenhagen, citing 'an official close to the Administration'. Today, the Times is reporting that an Administration spokesman insisted that “no decision has been made” about the trip. I'm quite sure that no American newspaper has been following this so closely.

Obama will be in Oslo on December 10 to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Personally, I think it would be a big snub to be so close, and skip Copenhagen. However, one man cannot bridge the unbridgable divides at the UN negotiations. Instead of focusing entirely on Copenhagen, the British press should be looking to the bilateral arrangements that the Obama administration is quietly lining up. If the upcoming meetings with Chinese Premier Hu Jintao and Indian PM Manmohan Singh end with robust climate agreements, then we can begin to talk about success in Copenhagen.

China and the Brahmaputra

2009-10-20T12:20:00.000-04:00

As a follow-up to the previous post on the need for cooperation among the nations dependant on the rivers from the Himalayas, I've come across a report, "Dammed Rivers" from The Economist's Asia columnist, Banyan saying that Gezhouba, a Chinese construction company, had begun work on a dam across the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet, near the India-China border. When it enters India, this river is known as the Brahmaputra, emptying through Bangladesh into the Bay of Bengal.

Related, there is a story in yesterday's Times of India about Indian concerns over the beginning of a plan to divert water from the Yangtze River at the border of the Hubei and Henan provinces in Central China. The Yangtze is a river entirely within the borders of China, so at first glance it would appear that India should not be worried. However, an elaborate network of canals, resevoirs, and dams could concievably connect the rivers to the Yarlunch Tsangpo before it crosses into India. This would divert India and Bangladesh's water north to China.

Earlier this year, I had asked a geologist who specializes on the glaciers of Himilayas whether China could dam or divert the headwaters of any of their major rivers that begin in Tibet, like the Brahmaputra, the Ganges, or the Mekong. He said that such an engineering project would be impossible, because the area is so geologically active and the threat of earthquakes is too great. However, the Chinese are faced with a long-term, dire drought in the North, and they may think that massive engineering projects could get them out of that.

Certainly, diverting the flow of the Yarlung Tsangpo would provoke anger downstream in both India and Bangladesh. The question remains, though, to what extent would they go to stop it? Could conflict ensue over dwindling water resources?

Reports about the Himalayas

2009-10-20T11:08:00.011-04:00

The Financial Times reports today from Kathmandu about the dwindling amount of snow and ice on the glaciers of the Himalayas. Sometimes called 'the Third Pole', these mountains are the sourse for at least 10 of Asia's major rivers. Changes in the flow of these rivers caused by glacier and snow melt could affect the livliehoods of around 2 billion people.

This article makes the claim that what's important is not actually the retreat of the glaciers, but the decline in the snowpack. Melting snow, they claim, is what feeds the seasonal rivers. This is the first time that I've seen that enunciated. With credit to the FT, I reproduce their chart showing the rapid loss in water (snow, ice, or rain) from the Himilayas since 1960. What is most striking about this graph is that this decline has been constant since 1960, and the 1998-2008 decade -- the warmest in the human record -- is not even acounted for on this graph. We desperately need more and better information about what is happening in this region.

With better information, government ministers can determine how best to divide the dwindling water resources coming from the Himalayas. In September, environment ministers from across East and South Asia met in Nepal in the first example of intergovernmental meetings to discuss this topic.

Gordon Brown on Climate Risks

2009-10-19T16:02:00.002-04:00

Gordon Brown gave an excellent speech earlier today at Lancaster House in London to the Major Economies Forum (MEF) on climate change and energy about the impacts of climate change.

He invokes the threats of the melting of Himilayan glaciers, in 25 years. He talks about the threats to water supplies, food supplies, and the threats of unprecedented 'climate migration'. Other climate impacts that he invokes include the loss of the rainforests, fisheries, and biodiversity.

He claims that we face a future of two paths: one of 'business as usual' that will deliver growth for some time, but will eventually collapse under these burdens of a warming world. We cannot stand around while the world boils. He contrasts that with the path of 'low-carbon, high growth' that will cause some economic dislocations now, but will avoid the worst catastrophes of climate change. Brown says it will not be easy, and this path will challenge long-held assumptions about politics and economics. However, it must be worth it.

This speech underlines that leadership in the UK 'gets it' on climate change better than almost any other nation. Brown understands that talk about climate change must be forward looking. We cannot talk about the costs of mitigation, without talking about the costs of inaction. Too often, polticians in the US only talk about the short-term. With regards to climate change, we're only just begining a generational project to address this challenge.

Making the Climate Security Argument

2009-10-15T09:29:00.003-04:00

Politico had an article yesterday talking about the groups of veterans, named Operation Free, who are taking a bus tour around the country and making a case for action on climate change. Here is an article about the bus tour coming to Lincoln, Nebraska (at 6:15 am? will that really bring out the crowds?).

In some ways, I'm strongly in favor of this. Climate action is necessary, and whatever argument you need to make in order to pass it through the Senate should be made. However, nuance doesn't come through in political debates. By groups and politicians saying that climate change will cause wars, we risk overstating the argument.

It is demonstrable that climate change is a national security threat. Both the CNA and the National Intelligence Council have convincingly made that case. However, I am also slightly afraid that you could make that argument about any number of intractable global problems: poverty as a threat to national security, disease as a threat, inequality as a danger, even just general unhappiness. I've talked about the need to be prudent before.

That's why the IISS is working hard to more closely quantify the global security threats of cliamte change. The problem is that nothing is perfectly linear in this world. Climate change may cause water shortages, which may cause food shortages, which may cause famine, which may cause resource wars. This is a plausible and convincing chain of events, and there are other possible linkages. However, its very difficult to say that prudent action couldn't stop that chain at some point along the way.

I'm convinced, however, that addressing climate change is one of the most important challenges of our generation. Unmitigated, its effects over the long-term could be genuinely catastrophic. That should be reason enough to address this threat. If, politically, you have to invoke the military and call it a threat to 'national security', then I guess that's a stronger argument to make to Americans than calling it a threat to Polar Bears.

A Plausible (and Scary) Scenario

2009-10-05T11:40:00.003-04:00

IISS friend, Gwynne Dyer has written an article, "Losing Control of the Heat" for The Japan Times about last week's conference in Oxford "4 Degrees and Beyond" that looked at scenarios for out-of-control global warming.

This is an eye-opening article about the potential implications of what could happen with status-quo emissions. It is an extreme scenario, but preparing for the extremes is very important, both for society and for security. However, the implications of such a rise go far beyond 'security'. Dyer notes:

"At an average of 4 C warmer, 15 percent of the world's farmland would become useless due to heat and drought, and crop yields would fall sharply on half of the rest: an overall 30 to 40 percent fall in global food production. Since the world's population will have grown by 2 billion by then, there will be only half the food per person that we have now. Many people will starve.
In western and southern Africa, average temperatures will be up to 10 C higher than now. There will be severe drying in Central America, on both sides of the Mediterranean, and in a broad band across the Middle East, northern India, and Southeast Asia. With the glaciers gone, Asia's great rivers will be mostly dry in the summer. Even one meter of sea-level rise will take out half the world's food-rich river deltas, from the Nile to the Mekong."

However, Dyer makes clear that this is not written in stone. We have the opportunity to avoid this worst-case scenario. We can either continue with the status-quo, and hope we get lucky, or we can begin the difficult process of rolling back emissions. Europe has shown us how to begin. In December, negotiators from governments around the world will see if they can continue Europe's work.

Senate to vote to strip funding for CIA center on Climate Security

2009-10-05T09:46:00.005-04:00

Tomorrow, the Senate will vote on an amendment to block any funding for the CIA's new "Center on Climate Change and National Security." The amendment to H.R. 3326, the Defense Appropriations bill, was offered by Senator Barasso (R-WY). It would prohibit any funding in fiscal year 2010 for the CIA's center.

The amendment was made in order under a unanimous consent agreement, and is scheduled to get a vote tomorrow (Tuesday 10/6). It is unclear at this time whether the amendment will be require 50 or 60 votes to be included in the legislation.

Technically, this is an appropriations bill, meaning that it only spends money, and does not make policy. However, amendments like this are a common way for Members of Congress to include their legislative priorities in appropriations bills.

Barasso has been a strong opponent of any climate action, most notable saying that a cap-and-trade bill will increase 'international organized crime'. Barasso claims that focusing on climate change at the CIA will distract them from protecting against terrorism. Senator Feinstein (D-CA), the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, opposes the amendment, saying that such a center is entirely within the rights and purviews of the CIA.

In 2008, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) submitted a National Intelligence Assessment (NIA) on the national security implications of climate change. It is classified, but here is the testimony is unclassified. Short summary: climate change is a threat to national security because it can undermine the stability of already weak states.

Since the completion of the NIA in 2008, the National Intelligence Council (NIC), under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has operated an office of ‘Climate Change and State Stability’ to look at other issues in this area. The CIA's new center would apparently work in conjuction with the DNI's office.

It seems to me, that if the Intelligence Community has ruled that climate change is a threat to national security, then they must study it and look at it. For Congress to defund this office (or others that are looking at climate change) would undermine the ability of the Intelligence Community to actively look for non-traditional threats. One of the key areas that the CIA's center will study will be the negotiating positions and how other nations are complying with any international agreement on climate change. This is important work, and is consistent with the CIA's mission for other major international negotiations.

This is a clear political amendment that is targeted at undermining the argument that climate change is a threat to national security. If a majority of the Senate votes to prohibit this center, it clearly shows that the Senate does not support the view (held by Senator Kerry and others) that climate change threatens national security. This is an important signal vote for the upcoming debate on cliamte change in the Senate. Anyone who cares about how that debate will go should watch this debate closely.

NATO: The alliance must focus on climate challenge

2009-10-01T11:11:00.001-04:00

This morning, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Secretary-General of NATO said that the alliance must focus on the climate challenge: "NATO should do more to prepare for the challenges of climate change."

Rasmussen said that "rising sea levels, drought and competition for land and resources all have implications for security." This statement is broadly in line with what the IISS and others in the security community have been saying about climate change.

However, Rasmussen went further than many in the security community have gone, by offering a prescription for how to aleviate the security threats posed by climate change. First, he promoted fuel efficiency for military vehicles. This is not revolutionary, and was promoted by the CNA's most recent report. Frankly, the military can only have a limited role in mitigating climate change. More important, was his statement that NATO should help to build global military capacity for reacting to climate-induced disasters. He said:

"Right now, NATO engages in military training and capacity building with
countries around the world. We focus on things like peacekeeping, language
training and countering terrorism. What about also including cooperation
that helps build capacity in the armed forces of our partners to better manage
big storms, or floods, or sudden movements of populations?"

This is an important statement. As an organization, NATO is very good at projecting long-term strategy. A move to including training for how militaries, both within NATO, and developing country partners should deal with natural disasters caused by climate change would be an important way for the alliance to build a long-term capacity to deal with natural disasters.

(credit for photo: AFP)

SYRIA: Drought is driving farmers to the cities

2009-09-30T14:49:00.002-04:00

The middle east is facing a serious drought. IRIN, the media outlet of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that in Syria, Drought is driving farmers to the cities. The cities of Syria are already o

Perhaps its not a loss of food security that will be how droughts and climate change affect countries. Perhaps it will instead be the gradual end of rural livelihoods as their income literally dries up. In this case we see climate-induced migration, but its within countries.

Leadership on Climate Change

2009-09-21T19:39:00.007-04:00

International actors are preparing to take leadership roles in dealing with the impacts of climate change. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC that shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007, called for NATO to focus on climate induced conflicts, saying that:

"I think, given the fact that NATO is an organization which has enormous strengths, with the inputs of a large number of extremely important countries, I think it has to redefine its role...I would imagine that it should be driven by a much greater study of what is likely to happen in the future, than to be caught unawares. And if that’s the case NATO certainly can play an extremely important role in preventing or managing some of these threats and problems."

Part of adapting to climate change requires altering the aims and functions of institutions. For example, NATO is seeking to engage Russia on ensuing conflict does not result from the melting of the arctic. There are enormous untapped and contested hydrocarbon reserves under the melting ice that could be available.

This week, US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao will both address the UN general assembly. Premier Hu expected to announce a carbon intensity target to show its commitment to international efforts to mitigate climate change. Xinhua, China's state controlled media service, warned that "Any attempts by a party in the UN negotiations to maximize its own interest at the cost of interest of others in the negotiation process is not conducive to powering green economy and protecting our planet." China and Europe have both criticized the US for insufficient commitments to climate change mitigation and both may be seeking to cement itself as the international leader on climate change issues.

Aid to Bangladesh: Part of US Strategy for Copenhagen?

2009-09-10T17:56:00.005-04:00

The United States' strategy for achieving an international agreement on climate change at Copenhagen this December is becoming clear. Bilateral deals and negotiations efforts will complement the efforts under the UNFCC for a more comprehensive consensus. In an effort to convince China and India, the US has assured aid to Bangladesh, one of the most vulnerable states to climate change, for adapting to climate impacts and food security.

These efforts could bolster US credibility at the negotiations even when it's unclear if the Senate will vote on climate change legislation before the year's end. By assuring Bangladesh that the US will provide aid to mitigate food insecurity and climate change, the US has strengthened its bargaining position ahead of the Copenhagen negotiations.

Senator Kerry's Speech

2009-09-10T14:11:00.003-04:00

As I posted below, Senator Kerry spoke this morning at GW about climate change as "New Challenge to Global Stability". Kerry's speech was excellent; it was very well researched and well documented. Often, members of Congress say ‘climate change is a threat to security’ but I now think Kerry is the only one who can actually enumerate why. It was good to see him outline this debate, and I hope that he's making this case to his colleagues.

I've pulled the text of the speech from Senator Kerry's website, here. I think its important enough that I copy the text below in its entirity.

Eight years ago today, on September 10th, 2001, America experienced one last moment of complacency before plunging into crisis. That day, the world was already being transformed, but too few knew or understood the new era we were about to enter.

On September 10, Washington was consumed with business as usual. The top headline in the New York Times read, “Fear of Recession Ignites Discussion of More Tax Cuts”—we know how that turned out.
Cable news was wrapping up an entire summer of wall-to-wall coverage of Americans under attack. Unfortunately, the grave threat they warned us about came not from al Qaeda or Bin Laden, but from sharks attacking swimmers at the beach.

In retrospect, it’s hard to fathom the level of collective naiveté, but that was America’s reality on “the day before.” In the weeks and months that followed, so many in rooms just like this one shared the same regret: Washington simply didn’t connect the dots in time.

Well, today Adil Najam, Michael Oppenheimer, and I, along with many others, are working to connect the dots on another emerging threat. Once again the world is being upended, and too few are taking action. The latest science warns that we have a ten-year window – at most – to prevent catastrophic, irreversible climate change. That means we are once again living in a “day before” moment that cries out for action.

This is not hype. I’m not trying to compare two challenges that, frankly, are incomparable to each other or anything else in our history. I’m not arguing that we view the wide-ranging threat of climate change entirely through the narrow lens of terrorism—though there are good reasons to think that climate change could worsen the terrorist threat.

The real lesson of “the day before,” ladies and gentlemen, is that when we see a threat on the horizon, we can’t afford to wait until it arrives. Unless we take dramatic action – now— to restrain global climate change, we risk unleashing an aggressive new challenge to global stability, to the livelihoods of hundreds of millions, and yes, to America’s national security.

Frankly, we have no excuse to be caught by surprise in 2009. It was 1988 when Al Gore and I held the first Senate hearings on climate change, and NASA scientist Jim Hansen testified that the threat was real. Four years later, Al and I and a group of Senators went to Rio and worked with 177 other nations to put in place a voluntary framework for greenhouse gas reductions. Unfortunately, 17 years after Rio, 12 years after Kyoto, we are further behind than ever.

Facts, as the saying goes, are “stubborn things,” and here are a few incontrovertible ones: Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen 38% in the industrial era, from 280 to 385 parts per million. Scientists have warned that anything above 450— a warming of 2 degrees Celsius– would result in an unacceptable risk of catastrophic climate change. Some scientists even set the maximum at 350, but that’s too terrifying for many to contemplate since we're currently at 385. In short, the science is screaming at us, more definitively than ever.

And the simple reality is, we’re not doing nearly enough about it. The Heinz Center, MIT, and The Fletcher School analyzed the latest climate modeling from the 17 countries who have offered to do anything – China, 20% energy intensity reduction; Europe and the US, 80% reduction by 2050. The result? Even if we met today’s ambitious goals, we’re projected to hit 600-700 ppm by century’s end. Bottom line: none of the current proposals get the job done. In short, the challenge is growing more – not less—urgent.

Let me be clear: The threat we face is not an abstract concern for the future. It is already upon us. A new study in Science shows our CO2 emissions have already reversed a 2,000 year cooling trend in the Arctic, and the last ten years are the warmest since 1BC! At the other end of the globe, a 25-mile wide ice bridge connecting the Wilkins Ice Shelf to the Antarctic landmass shattered earlier this year.

We are deluding ourselves if we think these problems stop at our borders: the tiny coastal village of Newtok, Alaska, recently voted to relocate 9 miles inland because melting coastal ice shelves made their old home too dangerous. No longer can Newtok’s residents “see Russia from their porch” (if they ever could)—but go to Alaska and you can see with your own two eyes the impact of its permafrost melting. You need only talk to Alaska’s Senators to hear worrisome stories of warming’s direct impact on their state. Not projected impact—current impact.

Alaska’s melting is not a future prediction or possibility. It is being measured, and it is happening now. More than one-third of Americans live in coastal counties. As climate change intensifies, we risk repeating the story of Newtok, Alaska further south and on a terrifying scale.

People are taking notice. Our Pentagon and intelligence community have begun planning for climate contingencies, and security experts have been sounding the alarm. In 2007, eleven former Admirals and high-ranking generals issued a report from the Center for Naval Analysis labeling climate change a “threat multiplier” with “the potential to create sustained natural and humanitarian disasters on a scale far beyond those we see today.” In 2008, a National Intelligence Assessment echoed these warnings from inside government. General Anthony Zinni was characteristically blunt in assessing the threat. He warned that without action—and I quote—“we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll." This not an alarmist talking—it’s the former commander of all American forces in the Middle East!

Why, with so many other regional problems brewing, would a CENTCOM commander be so concerned about climate? Well, the Middle East is home to six percent of the world’s population but just two percent of the world’s water. A demographic boom and a shrinking water supply will only tighten the squeeze on a region that doesn’t need another reason to disagree violently.

Worldwide, climate change risks making the most volatile places even more combustible. Climate change injects a major new source of chaos, tension, and human insecurity into an already volatile world. It threatens to bring more famine and drought, worse pandemics, more natural disasters, more resource scarcity, and human displacement on a staggering scale. We risk fanning the flames of failed-statism, and offering glaring opportunities to the worst actors in our international system. In an interconnected world, that endangers all of us.

I’d be the first to acknowledge, the individual data points may sometimes be murky. But the pattern they create is irrefutably clear: We don’t know if Hurricane Katrina or the California forest fires were caused by climate change, but we do know that we are rapidly heading for a world where climate change causes worse Katrinas and worse forest fires. We don’t know with certainty whether severe drought pushed Darfur over the edge, but we do know that increasingly severe droughts worldwide will exacerbate ethnic tensions and conflicts even further.

Nowhere is the nexus between today’s threats and climate change stronger than in South Asia–the center of our counterterrorist operations and the home of Al Qaeda. Scientists are now warning that the Himalayan glaciers, which supply water to almost a billion people from China to Afghanistan—including three nuclear powers—could disappear completely by 2035.

Think about what this means: Water from the Himalayas flows through India into Pakistan. India’s rivers are not only vital to its agriculture, but absolutely central to its religious practice. Pakistan, for its part, is heavily dependent on irrigated farming to avoid famine. At a moment when the American government is pouring troops and resources into Afghanistan and preparing to invest billions to strengthen Pakistan’s capacity to deliver for its people, it’s infuriating to think that climate change could work so powerfully against our long-term goals.

Meanwhile, by some estimates, next year more people will be displaced worldwide by environmental changes and natural disasters than by war. Because food security depends on water security, which climate change threatens, yields from rain-fed crops could drop by up to 50% by 2020—pushing more people off their land. Africa, no stranger to the instability, conflict, and competition over resources that drive people from their homes and create refugees and internally displaced people, will now confront these same challenges with an ever growing population of “EDPs”—environmentally displaced people.

Many of the worst impacts of climate change will be human tragedies—natural disasters, more virulent disease, and people forced to flee their homes. Some will directly touch on our security and vital national interests. Others will require America, as the country with the world’s best and fastest expeditionary capacity, to offer direct assistance. And even when our security and our resources are not directly challenged by the impacts of climate change, our leadership will be—and our conscience ought to be.

In addition to the increased demand for expeditionary capacity, the effects of a changing climate will also pose significant practical challenges for our military. Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean, a vital hub for our military operations across the Middle East, sits on an atoll just a few feet above sea level. Norfolk, VA, home to our Atlantic Fleet, will be submerged by one meter of sea level rise. All of our Navy’s piers are actually cemented to the ocean floor—which means that any rise in sea level will literally require the Navy to rebuild all of them. Are these problems insurmountable? No. But they will be expensive, and they risk compromising our readiness.

We all know the future has a way of humbling those who try to predict it too precisely. But we also know, from scientists and security experts, that the threat is real, grave, and growing. And if we fail to connect the dots—if we fail to take action—the simple reality is that we will find ourselves living not only in a ravaged environment, but also in a much more dangerous world.

Even as we make the case for climate change as a national security issue, we should remember that there are other costs of inaction. We also run the risk of missing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lead the world into a new economic era. If we take the steps and invest the resources necessary to meet this challenge, we can spark an economic renaissance of new technologies, new industries, and – just when we need them most—millions of new jobs.

With more than 15 million Americans out of a job, the need couldn’t be any more compelling for an economic strategy to get people back to work in good, high-paying jobs that can’t be shipped overseas.

Some say we can’t afford to act. They have it exactly wrong—we can’t afford not to act! We are already falling behind unnecessarily. It was Americans who developed the technological foundations of wind, solar, and advanced battery power. And yet just one of the top five wind power manufacturers is American; just one of the 10 largest solar panel producers is American; only two of the top 10 advanced battery manufacturers are American.

The world’s largest producer of renewable energy is not the United States, but Germany. And the economic benefits, as well as the environmental gains, are obvious: More than 280,000 Germans are employed in the renewable energy sector—a nine-fold increase in the past decade. While other countries debated how much their emissions could increase, since 1990 Germany has actually cut its emissions by over 20%!

Just think – for all the talk that China won’t act to prevent climate change, China today is producing cars a third-more fuel efficient than ours and making massive new investments in wind power and mass transit.
The fundamental challenge is this: Are we going to step up and put in place the policies that will galvanize entrepreneurs, drive development of new clean technologies, re-energize our economy and tackle global climate change – all at the same time? What’s at stake is not whether the 21st century will be a green economy – it has to become one, and it will. The question is whether America will lead, and reap the jobs that come with being ahead of the curve.

To do that, we need to act now. And to persuade Washington to act, we need to continue to win these arguments, and win them publicly. We have to educate and mobilize the American people. And I can tell you from my own conversations with colleagues, we have to educate Senators too! In the Senate, I’ve held hearings on climate and security and invited ASP experts like including Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, who is speaking at today’s conference—but also former Senator and Secretary of the Navy John Warner, who is doing a heroic job traveling the country and raising awareness on this issue. He’s doing more in retirement than some sitting Senators are!

I’ll tell you, if we had ten John Warners in the Senate, we’d already have a bill on the President’s desk. But unfortunately, not everyone in politics appreciates the urgency of this issue. After the last few months of health care demagoguery, we all know what’s coming when the Senate takes up climate change legislation. In this atmosphere of economic fear and political fear-mongering, one thing is certain: we won’t pass the strong legislation we need without a fight.

And make no mistake, the other side is gearing up. In the first half of 2009, the environmental community raised about $10 million to lobby for climate change legislation. This is impressive, but the oil and gas industry spent nearly $83 million lobbying against the bill. One DC lobbying firm actually forged letters—complete with the names and logos of a Hispanic nonprofit and (believe it or not) a local branch of the NAACP – urging House members to vote no on the House climate change bill!

In Washington, having truth on your side isn’t always enough to ensure that David beats Goliath. It’s up to us to get the message out. That’s why I’m pleased that the American Security Project is taking this on. I want to congratulate you on a hard-hitting set of ads, which I encourage all of you view at

www.SecureAmericanFuture.org.

You know, the 9/11 Commission report found that in the lead-up to the attacks, we suffered from a “failure of imagination.” We need to close the “imagination gap” on climate change and help people to envision a new kind of threat—and ads like yours are a helpful step in that direction.

As we weigh the options going forward and make our case to the American people, we also need to consider a simple comparison. What if Al Gore, John Kerry and thousands of scientists and security experts and leaders around the world are wrong? What’s the worst that would happen if we do the things we’re proposing? Well, if we respond adequately, change our energy habits, provide new technologies and solve the problem on a global basis, the worst that would happen is we are all healthier because of cleaner air; we will have transformed our economies and created millions of clean energy, high value added, sustainable jobs; we will have lived up to our environmental responsibility to create sustainable development policies, planted and saved forests and reduced disease and toxic poisoning that comes from antiquated industrial practices; we will have lived up to our humanitarian responsibilities to help developing countries avoid disease and dislocation; and we will have hugely enhanced our security by becoming less fossil fuel and foreign-oil dependent. That’s the worst that will happen if we’re wrong!

But what if the deniers and delayers are wrong? What are the consequences then? Plain and simple: sheer catastrophe. Folks, is there even a choice here? I believe there isn’t.

When you look past the trumped-up fears and partisan talking points, the science is clear, the economics is clear, the security argument is strong, and so are the actions we need to lead the world in taking. The more people understand the real implications of our choices—the upside of action, and the immense cost of doing nothing—the more I really believe they will embrace the argument we are making.

We all know about the August 2001 memo warning President Bush that terrorists were determined to strike inside the US. 36 days later, they did. Today, scientists are warning us that climate change is arriving faster than expected, and stronger than expected. Time is short. This is our memo. These are our warnings. The moment to act on them is now.

So let’s have the honest discussion the American people deserve. Let’s put America to work, marshalling the best of our markets and our minds to lead the world in solving this problem, and let’s act now—before it’s too late—to keep America safe. Thank you.

American Security Project: The Climate Security Index

2009-09-10T13:27:00.003-04:00

This morning the American Security Project (ASP) held a conference at GW University entitled “The Day Before: A Conference on the National Security Implications of Climate Change”. You can see the full line-up through that link, but I will just mention a couple of important presentations. Senator Kerry gave the keynote address, and I'll put a post on the blog on his speech alone. The ASP used this conference to launch their new Climate Security Index report.

The program led-off with a speech from former CIA chief Jim Woolsey, who has made a name for himself on energy and environmental security. He spoke mostly about energy security and vulnerability. He said that there are two types of threats to security: Malignent or Malevolent. A Malignent threat (like a tumor) grows in unpredictable and dangerous ways, but is nobody's fault; while a Malevolent threat is one that is directly attributable to a person or group that seeks to do harm. Woolsey said that climate change poses a clear malignent threat -- because we don't know how it will play out -- and that it can feed malevolent threats, like extremism or terrorism.

The other worthwhile speech was from Dr. Adil Najam, the Director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. Najam is skeptical about the securitization of climate change policy. In his presentation he said that climate change is a security problem, but it doesn't have a security solution. He said: "you can't shoot carbon". Unlike other security problem,s you can't independantly create what he called 'secure islands' in a world beset by climate change. This is a problem that operates at the global level and at the human level, but we only have national institutions to prevent the problems of climate change.

Miliband(s) on Climate Change and Security

2009-09-09T15:36:00.003-04:00

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has put together a very nice presentation on the foreign policy and security risks of unabated global warming. The map at left gives a good summary of some of the largest security risks of climate climate change.

You can see the presenatation, given by both of the brothers Miliband in the embedded video, below.

Carl Bildt: few issues are as important as climate change

2009-09-09T12:24:00.000-04:00

The Swedish Government -- as the current President of the EU -- will play a critical role in Copenhagen. They have long been involved in study and discussion about what the

This week, Foreign Minister Carl Bildt arrived in Paris, and climate policy was the lead area of focus. As an event, titled “Can political action successfully address climate change?” at the Parisian university Sciences-Po, Bildt spoke with French Foreign Minister Kouchner British Foreign Minister Miliband. Reportedly, the presentation focused on the security policy consequences if we fail to curb global warming.

Bildt explained that climate change has had political consequences in the past, but never before have we seen the likes of what we are experiencing today. Mr Bildt said that he and Messrs Kouchner and Miliband, as foreign ministers, must step up their efforts and explain for colleagues around the world that climate change is not just a climate issue, but also most certainly a political one.

"Climate change affects stability and security in parts of the world that are key to global stability and security,” said Bildt

Korea: was the water weapon used?

2009-09-09T10:04:00.003-04:00

This weekend, 6 South Koreans were killed by a flash flood. However, unlike usual flash floods (like this tragic flood in Istanbul), this one was not caused by heavy rains. Instead, it appears that the North Korean government opened the gates of its Hwanggang dam, which was just completed in 2007. Because it is only 5 km away from the DMZ, there is a good chance that this dam was built solely for the reason of threatening South Korea with just such an event.

Apparently, North Korea explained the event as a necessary discharge because of high water levels. Unification Minister Hyun In-taek sayis that this was not credible because rainfall the week before in that region was below 0.2 mm. He said that rainfall was not enough to motivate the North to release the water.The South has demanded that the North apologize. f

Korea is not usually an area that is mentioned when talking about the security effects of climate change. However, this event shows how water can be used as a weapon. If climate change causes either extreme drought or extreme rains (both likely events, but in different areas), it is not improbable to believe that water could be used as a real weapon.

(thanks to FP's Passport for the story)

Better Climate Predictions Needed

2009-09-08T10:14:00.002-04:00

One of the complaints that we often hear from the strategic planners looking at climate change is that the scientists cannot predict regional or time-specific weather patterns. They can broadly predict global trends, or long-term regional trends, but climate scientists are not weathermen. At this year's World Climate Conference, Andy Revikin of DotEarth is reporting that Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will expand the "strengthen production, availability, delivery and application of science-based climate prediction and services” by creating a new National Climate Service.

Forsight about climate prediction lies somewhere between being a weatherman and climatoligist. A climatologist will tell you what the earth's climate will look like in 100 years, and a weatherman will tell you what tomorrow's weather will be. Strategic planners need to know what the regional weather will be like over the next 5-30 years (the lifecycle of most infrastructure investments).

Up to now, scientists have not been able to say with any certainty whether a long-term drought or other security-altering weather will hit. However, they're becoming more accurate. For example, this today's New York Times reports that the drought in Eastern Kenya has been predicted for much of this year. As predictions become more precise, aid organizations, like the Red Cross, will be able to issue appeals for aid before a harsh weather pattern becomes a humanitarian crises. The only trick will be to attract the aid before the media can put pictures of starving children in the newspaper.

Better prediction will allow for better adaptation. As governments, businesses, and individuals begin to know how the climate will change, they can take precautionary measures to avoid the worst effects. Strategic forsight about climate change will be critical.

Can 'Security' argument get Climate action through the Senate?

2009-09-04T11:22:00.005-04:00

According to Jill Lawerence at PoliticsDaily, the talk of climate change as a national security threat could 'power then energy bill to Senate Passage.' I think this is an important debate to have, but unfortunately, its become simplified. Its impossible to do 'nuance' when you're trying to use a message to 'power' something through the Senate. Is climate change a threat to security? Of course. I wouldn't be running this blog if I didn't think so. However, will climate change cause a war? Its complicated, but probably not on its own. Will climate change kill Americans? Yes -- absolutely, but they probably won't think about that as a hurricane is coming after them.

As I mentioned earlier, we should not overstate the climate security argument. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only way that it will get traction. Supporters have tried green jobs, but that's run into headwinds. They've tried energy independence, but that is a mirage. Now, we hope that security can convice people to take the real threats of climate change seriously. We're already seeing a backlash, but can this convince just a few?

Why couldn't be be more like the French? They're taking action on climate to protect their wine!

US-China deal

2009-09-04T10:59:00.000-04:00

According to Senator Cantwell (D-WA), who is in China this week, the scene is set for a US-China deal. Cantwell says that the President's visit to China in November provides a perfect oppotunity for the signing of such a deal. She said: "I'd place higher odds on the ability of the United States and China to reach an agreement than I would on us passing legislation or on having Copenhagen agreed"
Read the whole reuters article here.

Afghanistan's vulnerabilty to climate change -- as if they don't have enough to worry about

2009-09-03T17:54:00.003-04:00

Climate change may exacerbate security challenges in Afghanistan, a country already torn by war and instability for almost a decade. A recent report by the Asian Development Bank cites Afghanistan, along with India, Nepal and Bangladesh, as a country likely to face water and food security challenges due to climate change.

With a GDP of only $23 billion and 80% of the labor force in agriculture, Afghanistan's vulnerable to drought and famine. NATO's security commitment to Afghanistan involves not just military operations but efforts to provide a stable government and improved economy. In order to prevent the rise of extremism, the US counter-insurgency process will take years not months. The question now is to what extent, if any, has the US accounted for climate change modeling in its long counter-insurgency strategy? What measures will the US take to help adapt to climate change in Afghanistan?