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New study links climate change to growing homeland security concern

| 11.06.2007 | 08:10:066492 |
November 6 '07: Reuters reported Monday that a new report released by the Center for Strategic & International Studies and the Center for a New American Security entitled "The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change" has found that domestic and international security concerns will begin to grow as the earth's climate changes and heats up.
The Associated Press reported that according to the report, "climate change could be on of the greatest national security challenges every faced by U.S. policy makers."

The AP continued: "The report was compiled by a panel of security and climate specialists," and though changes in the climate is likely to cause international and domestic tension it is "already ... magnifying existing problems from the desertification of Darfur and competition for water in the Middle East to the disruptive monsoons in Asia which increase the pressure for land."

The report outlined three possible scenarios facing the international community in the coming decades: expected, severe, and catastrophic outcomes which would unfold depending on the gravity of change and steps taken to reduce global emissions.

Further, the report said that past predictions of future weather changes were difficult because they were incorrect in that they had been too conservative and that the most recent studies have shown climate changes increasing more than previously expected. "At a definition level, a narrow interpretation of the term 'national security' may be woefully inadequate to convey the ways in which state authorities might break down in a worst cast scenario," the report said.

To help mitigate some of the security, economic, governmental and societal threats facing the U.S. and the rest of the international community, the report said that rebuilding the U.S.' world standing, better stewardship of the environment, responsible withdrawal from Iraq, "persevering" in Afghanistan and a renewed look at violent extremism would help to proactively put the U.S. on the leading forefront of change.