"Covering Climate Now" - US Army War College Report

Executive Summary

Implications of Climate Change for the U.S. Army

Current conversations about climate change and its impacts are often rancorous and politically charged. As an organization that is, by law, non-partisan, the Department of Defense (DoD) is precariously unprepared for the national security implications of climate change-induced global security challenges. This study examines the implications of climate change for the United States Army. This includes national security challenges associated with or worsened by climate change, and organizational challenges arising from climate change-related issues in the domestic environment. Given that, the study’s starting point is the implications of climate change for the U.S. Army, and the Army is therefore the focus of the analysis and recommendations. That said, much of the analysis involves DoD and other elements of the government, and most of the Army-specific recommendations have parallels that apply to other military services.

The study itself did not involve original research on the nature or magnitude of climate change. The analysis assumes, based on the preponderance of evidence available, that significant changes in climate have already occurred, likely to worsen in the years ahead. The study did not look to ascribe causation to climate change (man-made or natural), as causation is distinct from effects and not pertinent to the approximately 50-year horizon considered for the study. The study does, however, assume that human behavior can mitigate both the size and consequences of negative impacts that result from climate change…

Conclusion

The implications of significant, global, regional and local change produced by a general warming of the Earth’s climate are far too extensive to be addressed by this study. Therefore, the guiding principle of this study was to explore diverse areas of importance for the Army that are or will be likely affected by climate change and to develop reasonable, useful recommendations in connection with those areas. A larger and perhaps even more urgent lesson from this study is the importance of developing regular administrative and institutional structures and processes that allow the Army and the DoD to detect, evaluate, respond and regularly review the implications of systemic risk relevant to the Army’s missions and preparedness. Large scale threats like cli- mate change and mass migrations are systemic risks, with emergent features not captured by the simple summation of threat-by-threat-by-threat assessments. The Army must find governance mechanisms that generate greater flexibility, without risk of compromise to the integrity of the force, to deal with the various significant stresses on the Army inherent to a warming climate. These stresses are occurring for military and civilian institutions alike against the backdrop of exponential changes in technology, human population, resource consumption, urbanization, sea level rise, etc.

It is useful to remind ourselves regularly of the capacity of human beings to persist in stupid beliefs in the face of significant, contradictory evidence. Mitigation of new large-scale stresses requires a commitment to learning, systematically, about what is happening…

52-page report PDF link here.

Worth your time. Heavily sourced, 194 reference footnotes, many with hyperlinks. Props to the Naked Capitalism Blog for bringing it to our attention.

BTW, see also climate change related topics at the US Naval War College.

THE "PYROCENE?"

"The Age of Flames Is Consuming California"

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More to come... #CoveringClimateNow