The debate about climate change and national security continues.
The United States Government, as reported by the New York Times last month, is now of the view that climate change can topple governments and provide more triggers and encouragement for terrorism.
Senator John Kerry concurs. "At a moment when the U.S. government is scrambling to ratchet down tensions and preparing to invest billions of dollars to strengthen Pakistan's capacity to deliver for its people – climate change could work so powerfully in the opposite direction,'' Kerry writes. "Worldwide, climate change risks making the most volatile places even more combustible. The bottom line is that failure to tackle climate change risks much more than a ravaged environment: It risks a much more dangerous world, and a gravely threatened America."
Others are not so sure. Commentor Steven Walt says that while climate change is serious, it will not necessarily threaten US interests. Walt writes: "Climate change might also foster instability in various "volatile areas," but it does not immediately follow from that observation that U.S. interests will necessarily be affected in any significant way … the likely demands on U.S. military forces will be for humanitarian relief, not for the protection of vital U.S. interests. I have no problem with humanitarian relief, by the way, but let's call it what it is – a form of global philanthropy – and not try to sell it as a defense of the American people."
Maybe we have to re-assess climate change as something that creates a different kind of security threat. As one Indian study reported here says, climate change is not about wars. It's more about a gradual build-up of stresses, tensions and sometimes violent conflicts due to breakdown of physical and environmental systems.
no comment untill now