Nearly eleven months ago, Senator Bernie Sanders stated plainly in the first Democratic Presidential debate that climate change was the number one national security threat to the United States (every other Democratic contender said ISIS). Sanders took an incredible amount of heat from the Republican Party following his claims, but both Republican and Democratic administrations and military leaders have made it clear that climate change is a top security threat.
While discussion of climate change has all but disappeared from the United States Presidential race following Sanders’ exit, in a “blink and you’ll miss it” moment on September 21st, President Obama signed a directive ordering federal agencies to begin factoring climate change into their national security plans. Every federal agency, from the FDA to the EPA to the Pentagon, has a national security plan to address a threat to the specific area of regulation, and thanks to Obama’s new directive, combatting the effects of climate change are now required in those plans.
According to The Hill, the directive will require agencies to:
develop a “federal climate and national security working group” to “identify the U.S. national security priorities related to climate change and national security, and develop methods to share climate science and intelligence information to inform national security policies and plans,” the White House said.
Agencies were given 90 days to develop their plans, which include sharing information across agencies in order to develop cohesive, intertwined climate action plans. The directive coincided with a National Intelligence Council report that explains how the effects of global warming including droughts, rising sea levels, and other extreme weather events will lead to an increase in climate refugees, as well as endanger military bases both in the U.S. and abroad, and severely limit crisis response in the future (both for military actions and disaster response).
The NIC report expresses the same concerns that the Department of Defense has been raising for years, dating all the way back to the George Bush Sr. administration.
With just a few months left in his administration, President Obama seems to have found renewed energy to push for climate change action in the United States. While his administration has been overly friendly to the fossil fuel industry, undoubtedly adding to the climate crisis, Obama is clearly beginning to understand that his legacy on climate change will have the longest-lasting impact from his time in office, and he’s stepping up his game. Whether it was too little, too late, only history will judge.
Image via SustainablePulse.com.
