Congressional Testimony on Energy Security and Climate Change

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.

More Security Agencies Calling Climate Change a Threat

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

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

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

An Analysis of Copenhagen

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. 

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

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.

Senator Kerry's Speech

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.

New York Times Editorial

Following up on the front-page article from August 9, the New York Times has published a new editorial today about 'The Climate and National Security'. It is important that the newspaper of record has published this editorial. However, the editorial lauds the tactic of calling climate change a security threat, as a way to change the minds of wavering Senators.

Getting a strong bill through Congress is an important goal, but that alone won't stop many of the real security effects of cliamte change: the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere guarantee that we'll see significant warming in the coming decades. Even in a best-case scenario, this will cause droughts, floods, food shortages, and competition over scarce resources. That's why its important to begin to plan for climate-induced threats to security. We shouldn't make a specious arguments for short-term political points. Instead, we should make planning for climate change an important part of defense strategy.

The Economist on Waxman-Markey

The Economist has an article out this week that does not like the House's Waxman Markey Climate Change bill. It supports President Obama's plan that would have auctioned all credits, creating revenue the the government could then hand out as it likes. Instead, Waxman-Markey gives away 85% of its carbon credits to industy. In this way, they will recieve the windfall from this bill, not the government.

So, the Economist seems to favor tax increases, while Waxman-Markey favors corporate welfare. The article makes the good point that: "it means that the permits go not to those who value them most (as in an auction) but to those whom the government favours." Republican's (who claim to oppose both tax increases and corporate welfare) the article expects to: "berate the bill as both a job-destroyer and a handout to big business." Its hard to be both, which points to the difficulty that Republicans are having trying to craft a message on this issue.

Environmentally, all that matters, however, is that the cap is tightly put on. The rest is just how you share the money.

A week of Action on the Hill

As Sophia mentioned below, this has been quite a week on the Hill for hearings on Climate Change. Although not specifically related to the security effects of climate change, it is nonetheless important to keep up with what's going down on the Hill. Here's so quick links to articles about the hearings:

This morning, Al Gore testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee that this bill "has the moral significance equivalent to that of the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s and the Marshall Plan of the late 1940s.'' Testifying along with him, Newt Gingrich, however, said that this bill was a "huge mistake" and ammounted to a major new tax on energy.

At the same hearing, former Senator Warner focused on the national security implications of climate change.

Among the things that this bill would do, it would create a new "National Climate Service" to log and coolate all the data in the US about climate change.

On Huffington Post, John Kerry writes that Newt is rehashing "The same tired formula".

House Subcommittee Hearing

Yesterday, the House subcommittee on Energy and the Environment had a hearing on "The Climate Crisis: National Security, Economic, and Public Health Threats."

I had forgotten that its quite frustrating to actually attend hearings: the Members give extended opening statements, then get up and leave before they hear the testimony or ask questions. The result is that the only Members who really engage on the subject are those that really have a strong vested interest.

As a Republican, its sometimes hard for me to listen to our House members discuss climate change. They haven't changed their talking points for a decade, and are still fighting with the scientists. I make it a point to not argue with scientists. The Committee yesterday had a real chance to engage with some of the real experts on this subject: former CIA director Woolsey, and General Gordon Sullivan. Instead, both the Republicans and Democrats spent far too much time trying to score points by arguing with the two climate scientists on the panel (one placed by each side).

General Sullivan, who was one of the leaders of the CNA's report on Climate Change and Security, pointedly refused to engage in the political back-and-forth. He was there to talk about the national security risks of climate change, and wasn't going to get pulled into it.

Over all, I don't think any news was made: everything there had been said already. However, its important to bring this debate back into Congress. Anything we can do to elevate the debate beyond the point-scoring and arguments about he science is best for a true dialogue on climate change and security.