It’s no secret that most Tea Baggers, many Republicans, and even some Democrats don’t believe that human activity has caused, and is increasingly causing, the Earth’s climate to change.
Apparently, neither the potential for economic recovery nor threats to U.S. national security can budge climate change deniers from their positions.
The U.S. military, on the other hand, operates in the fact-based world.
Ideological polarization on the topic of climate change has paralyzed the U.S. Government (in which I include both the Congress and the White House) from aggressively pursuing policies that would simultaneously mitigate climate change and give a much-needed boost to the U.S. economy (emphasis added in all quotes):
America was the world's leader in alternative energy research in the 1970s, but that came to a sudden halt when incentives, subsidies and research funding were slashed after President Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. Since then, most solar innovation has come from Europe, with huge advances being made in Germany, Austria and Scandinavia. -- Solar-energy guru sees change on horizon
Meanwhile, the U.S. sticks to the old ways and falls farther and farther behind:
Last year, China surpassed the United States as the world's largest automaker. The country is aggressively making jets to compete with Boeing and Airbus. And in recent years, with little outside notice, China made another great leap forward in transportation: It now leads the world in high-speed rail.
High-speed trains were once the preserve of Japan, with its "bullet train," and France, with its TGV. But China's trains are the world's fastest, its network of tracks the longest and its expansion plans the most ambitious. By 2012, just four years after it began its first high-speed passenger service, China will have more high-speed train tracks than the rest of the world combined. --
WaPo: China is pulling ahead in worldwide race for high-speed rail transportation
The current issue of The New Yorker has a long article by Ryan Lizza in which he describes How the Senate and the White House missed their best chance to deal with climate change.
Lizza’s article starts from the fact that John Kerry, Lindsay Graham, and Joe Lieberman had spent seven months beginning in 2009 hammering out a "a comprehensive bill that promised to transform the nation’s approach to energy and climate change." The article is long and full of behind-the-scenes legislative machinations, but the gist of Lizza’s thesis is that the White House gave away the store before the deal was closed.
On March 31st, Obama announced that large portions of U.S. waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic Ocean, and off the East Coast—from the mid-Atlantic to central Florida—would be newly available for oil and gas drilling. Two days later, he said, "It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore." From the outside, it looked as if the Obama Administration were coördinating closely with Democrats in the Senate. Republicans and the oil industry wanted more domestic drilling, and Obama had just given it to them. He seemed to be delivering on the grand bargain that his aides had talked about at the start of the Administration.
But there had been no communication with the senators actually writing the bill, and they felt betrayed. When Graham’s energy staffer learned of the announcement, the night before, he was "apoplectic," according to a colleague. The group had dispensed with the idea of drilling in ANWR, but it was prepared to open up vast portions of the Gulf and the East Coast. Obama had now given away what the senators were planning to trade.
This was the third time that the White House had blundered. In February, the President’s budget proposal included $54.5 billion in new nuclear loan guarantees. Graham was also trying to use the promise of more loan guarantees to lure Republicans to the bill, but now the White House had simply handed the money over. Later that month, a group of eight moderate Democrats sent the E.P.A. a letter asking the agency to slow down its plans to regulate carbon, and the agency promised to delay any implementation until 2011. Again, that was a promise Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman wanted to negotiate with their colleagues. Obama had served the dessert before the children even promised to eat their spinach. Graham was the only Republican negotiating on the climate bill, and now he had virtually nothing left to take to his Republican colleagues.
There’s a lot more, but the article concludes with a depressing summary by Al Gore and an even more depressing conclusion about Barack Obama:
[Gore] cited several reasons, including Republican partisanship, which had prevented moderates from becoming part of the coalition in favor of the bill. The Great Recession made the effort even more difficult, he added. "The forces wedded to the old patterns still have enough influence that they were able to use the fear of the economic downturn as a way of slowing the progress toward this big transition that we have to make."
A third explanation pinpointed how Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman approached the issue. "The influence of special interests is now at an extremely unhealthy level," Gore said. "And it’s to the point where it’s virtually impossible for participants in the current political system to enact any significant change without first seeking and gaining permission from the largest commercial interests who are most affected by the proposed change."
Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman were not alone in their belief that transforming the economy required coöperation, rather than confrontation, with industry. American Presidents who have attempted large-scale economic transformation have always had their efforts tempered—and sometimes neutered—by powerful economic interests. Obama knew that, too, and his Administration had led the effort to find workable compromises in the case of the bank bailouts, health-care legislation, and Wall Street reform. But on climate change Obama grew timid and gave up, leaving the dysfunctional Senate to figure out the issue on its own.
As the Senate debate expired this summer, a longtime environmental lobbyist told me that he believed the "real tragedy" surrounding the issue was that Obama understood it profoundly. "I believe Barack Obama understands that fifty years from now no one’s going to know about health care," the lobbyist said. "Economic historians will know that we had a recession at this time. Everybody is going to be thinking about whether Barack Obama was the James Buchanan of climate change."
It’s crystal clear that the majority of U.S. politicians has determined that politics as usual – that is, gaining some ephemeral short term political advantage – is more important than supporting efforts to reverse man-made global climate change or investing substantially (yes, I know there’s some) in non-fossil fuel energy.
Meanwhile, however, the U.S. military is behaving far more pragmatically.
As long ago as April 2007, CNA, a non-profit research organization that operates the Center for Naval Analyses and the Institute for Public Research, convened a Military Advisory Board (MAB) of eleven retired three-star and four-star admirals and generals to assess the impact of global climate change on key matters of national security, and to lay the groundwork for mounting responses to the threats found. In April 2007, CNA released National Security and the Threat of Climate Change
The introduction, signed by all eleven admirals and generals, was not happy talk:
During our decades of experience in the U.S. military, we have addressed many national security challenges, from containment and deterrence of the Soviet nuclear threat during the Cold War to terrorism and extremism in recent years. Global climate change presents a new and very different type of national security challenge.
Over many months and meetings, we met with some of the world’s leading climate scientists, business leaders, and others studying climate change. We viewed their work through the lens of our military experience as warfighters, planners, and leaders. Our discussions have been lively, informative, and very sobering.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are greater now than at any time in the past 650,000 years, and average global temperature has continued a steady rise. This rise presents the prospect of significant climate change, and while uncertainty exists and debate continues regarding the science and future extent of projected climate changes, the trends are clear. The nature and pace of climate changes being observed today and the consequences projected by the consensus scientific opinion are grave and pose equally grave implications for our national security. Moving beyond the arguments of cause and effect, it is important that the U.S. military begin planning to address these potentially devastating effects. The consequences of climate change can affect the organization, training, equipping, and planning of the military services. The U.S. military has a clear obligation to determine the potential impacts of climate change on its ability to execute its missions in support of national security objectives.
Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the United States. Accordingly, it is appropriate to start now to help mitigate the severity of some of these emergent challenges. The decision to act should be made soon in order to plan prudently for the nation’s security.
The increasing risks from climate change should be addressed now because they will almost certainly get worse if we delay.
[CNA has published some additional interesting reports on the ramifications of climate change to the U.S. security: Why the Emergency Management Community Should be Concerned about Climate Change (June 17, 2010) and Climate Change, Migration, and Emergencies: In Search of a Policy Framework (June 23, 2010).]
In October 2007, the maritime forces of the United States – the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard – published "A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower." Among other things, the document noted (p. 7):
The vast majority of the world’s population lives within a few hundred miles of the oceans. Social instability in increasingly crowded cities, many of which exist in already unstable parts of the world, has the potential to create significant disruptions. The effects of climate change may also amplify human suffering through catastrophic storms, loss of arable lands, and coastal flooding, could lead to loss of life, involuntary migration, social instability, and regional crises.
The Navy remains concerned:
The hand-wringing over global warming is often done by scientists and preservationists, but on Tuesday several high-ranking current and former military men visited Atlanta and talked about the possible consequences for U.S. security.
They imagine disruptions in the supply of food and water that lead to unrest and to conflict around the globe. They see poverty-stricken countries becoming increasingly unstable. And they worry about whole populations on the move, as the seas rise and rivers change their courses.
Rear Admiral David Titley said there is strong evidence that old arctic ice has melted much faster than new ice can replace it. It's a trend that scientists predict could someday yield a rise in sea level by a meter or two, he said.
"I've had people ask me: ‘Why should the Navy care?'" he said. He has a dry response loaded with sarcasm: "Well, we tend to build our bases at sea level." --
Military considers global warming threat (1/19/10)
Today’s New York Times describes the latest steps the military is taking:
U.S. Military Orders Less Dependence on Fossil Fuels
With insurgents increasingly attacking the American fuel supply convoys that lumber across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, the military is pushing aggressively to develop, test and deploy renewable energy to decrease its need to transport fossil fuels.
Solar power was tested in May in Morocco. A Marine company brought some renewable energy equipment to Afghanistan.
Last week, a Marine company from California arrived in the rugged outback of Helmand Province bearing novel equipment: portable solar panels that fold up into boxes; energy-conserving lights; solar tent shields that provide shade and electricity; solar chargers for computers and communications equipment.
The 150 Marines of Company I, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, will be the first to take renewable technology into a battle zone, where the new equipment will replace diesel and kerosene-based fuels that would ordinarily generate power to run their encampment.
Even as Congress has struggled unsuccessfully to pass an energy bill and many states have put renewable energy on hold because of the recession, the military this year has pushed rapidly forward. After a decade of waging wars in remote corners of the globe where fuel is not readily available, senior commanders have come to see overdependence on fossil fuel as a big liability, and renewable technologies — which have become more reliable and less expensive over the past few years — as providing a potential answer.
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"There are a lot of profound reasons for doing this, but for us at the core it’s practical," said Ray Mabus, the Navy secretary and a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who has said he wants 50 percent of the power for the Navy and Marines to come from renewable energy sources by 2020. That figure includes energy for bases as well as fuel for cars and ships.
While setting national energy policy requires Congressional debates, military leaders can simply order the adoption of renewable energy. And the military has the buying power to create products and markets. That, in turn, may make renewable energy more practical and affordable for everyday uses, experts say. [Diarist's note: the President could simply order the vast federal bureaucracy to buy renewable energy products. There have been some relatively small efforts in this direction: U.S. feds spends $300 million on green vehicles, will save $40 million in fuel costs.]
Last year, the Navy introduced its first hybrid vessel, a Wasp class amphibious assault ship called the U.S.S. Makin Island, which at speeds under 10 knots runs on electricity rather than on fossil fuel, a shift resulting in greater efficiency that saved 900,000 gallons of fuel on its maiden voyage from Mississippi to San Diego, compared with a conventional ship its size, the Navy said.
The Air Force will have its entire fleet certified to fly on biofuels by 2011 and has already flown test flights using a 50-50 mix of plant-based biofuel and jet fuel; the Navy took its first delivery of fuel made from algae this summer. Biofuels can in theory be produced wherever the raw materials, like plants, are available, and could ultimately be made near battlefields.
Concerns about the military’s dependence on fossil fuels in far-flung battlefields began in 2006 in Iraq, where Richard Zilmer, then a major general and the top American commander in western Iraq, sent an urgent cable to Washington suggesting that renewable technology could prevent loss of life. That request catalyzed new research, but the pressure for immediate results magnified as the military shifted its focus to Afghanistan, a country with little available native fossil fuel and scarce electricity outside cities.
It’s long past time for politicians of both parties to "listen to the Generals"™ (and the Admirals) and actually do something positive about reversing climate change and getting the U.S. out of its dependence on fossil fuels.