Climate Change Threat to US Security

A front-page story in Sunday's New York Times proclaimed Climate Change Seen as a Threat to U.S. Security, describing how climate change could lead to "profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics." , Reuters reports.

While most policy discussions around climate change focus on energy wonks, the Times says that military analysts are increasingly of the view that “climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions”. Food and water shortages or huge floods could push vulnerable regions over the edge into crises that could “demand an American humanitarian relief or military response”, it says ,Nature.com (subscription) reports.

However, the Pentagon is clearly taking the security risks related to human-driven climate change seriously. But do they hold up as justification for a bill capping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that would take decades to result in big emissions reductions? ,New York Times reports.