ACES, the American Clean Energy & Security Act, is not just about clean energy, but also about American security: both energy security and national security.
Many Republicans agree with the slogan "energy security." However, often the only detail behind that slogan is "drill, baby, drill!" Drilling simply kicks a can down the road -- what happens when the oil runs out? Further, drilling has no impact whatsoever on climate change, awhich in turn affects national security.
How does climate change affect national security? Two examples suffice: Darfur and Pakistan. This is the fourth in a series exploring ACES as President Obama, the United Nations, and the Senate begin an intricate dance next week in anticipation of Copenhagen. The starting point is obvious: Pass a Reality-Based Bill, where reality is 350 ppm. ACES will also provide for clean energy and clean jobs. I've also asked Wind and Solar Power: Clean Jobs, Tariffs, or Both?
One of the less intuitive elements of the coalition favoring ACES is the national security experts: long term strategic planners who now worry about natural security.
John Warner, retired Republican senator from Virginia, may have been the first to connect the dots five to six years ago, and currently is trying to build grassroots support for climate change legislation. In the Senate, he realized the potential destabilization that climate change could wreak, began working with Hillary Clinton on the issue, and now a whole section in the Department of Defense works on climate change issues. Warner notes that three states particularly vulnerable to rising tides are Florida, with its coastline, and South Carolina and Virginia, with their military bases. America is not required to respond to the consequences of climate change in other countries, but as he recently told Politics Daily "we're often in the forefront of response to these things. We're the nation with the most sealift. The most airlift. We have more medical teams which are mobile, more storehouses of food and supplies to meet emergencies. And throughout our history, from the beginning of the republic, America's always had to respond to certain humanitarian disasters."
PD: With environmentalists already on board, are you trying to interest other types of people?
JW: That's quite true. People think climate change is solely an environmental campaign. And I . . . consider myself strongly in support of the environmental goals of this country. But a lot of people look with a different view on that. This says, "Hey, wait a minute, irrespective of your feeling about environmental concerns, here's a practical effect. Your sons or daughters or next door neighbor might be sent out on a military mission."
"Drill, baby, drill!" won't address any of Republican ex-Senator Warner's concerns.
At NN09, I had the pleasure of meeting Jon Gensler, former US Army Captain, LEED certified professional, and West Virginia resident. After serving in Iraq, he was shocked to find that the mountains of his home state resembled something from TS Eliot's The Waste Lands.
(photo via ThinkProgress) Gensler's commitment goes beyond his home state and on to seeing the bigger picture:
You see, this isn’t merely about saving our mountains; this is about preserving our way of life, about reasserting our national place as an international leader.
Who will respond when storms of growing frequency and intensity batter the shorelines of the world? Not the Chinese. Not India. We will. The US military. And beyond the count of humanitarian missions that will rise with rising seas, we must not for a moment underestimate the threats that will increase as populations are displaced, as drinking water becomes ever more scarce. Misery and scarcity will spread, creating breeding grounds where terrorists can and will gain a foothold.
Check out Operation Free's website, or join it on Facebook.
VoteVets on ACES: "Not just a question of American energy, but a question of American power."
John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a cosponsor of ACES along with Barbara Boxer, agrees with John Warner. His 9/10/09 Climate Speech compares where the country was on 9/10/01 in terms of recognizing the Al Qaeda threat with where we are today in recognizing the threat of global climate change. Last month Kerry wrote in the Huffington Post:
The individual data points may sometimes be murky. But the pattern they create is irrefutably clear: We don't know if Hurricane Katrina was caused by climate change, but we do know that we are rapidly heading for a world where climate change causes worse Katrinas. We don't know with certainty whether climate change pushed Darfur over the edge, but we do know that it will cause more tension just like we've seen in Darfur.
"Destabilization" is a bloodless, bureaucratic word. Another way to put it: Darfurs, Rwandas, and other humanitarian crises caused by too many people living too close together with too few resources. I don't know if climate change will cause 20 Darfurs a year. I do know that one is too many. And I know that "drill, baby, drill!" might (but probably won't) lead to energy security, at least for a few years, but it will never address the perfect natural security storm that Pakistan is becoming: "Climate change hangs over an already bad situation like a sword of Damocles."
Foreign Policy articulates the issue:
When it comes to the stability of one of the world's most volatile regions, it's the fate of the Himalayan glaciers that should be keeping us awake at night.
In the mountainous area of Kashmir along and around Pakistan's contested border with India lies what might become the epicenter of the problem. Since the separation of the two countries 62 years ago, the argument over whether Kashmir belongs to Muslim Pakistan or secular India has never ceased. Since 1998, when both countries tested nuclear weapons, the conflict has taken on the added risk of escalating into cataclysm.
Ninety percent of Pakistan's agricultural irrigation comes from rivers originating in Kashmir snows. Traditionally, snow falls in the highlands in winter, melts away in the spring, and feeds rivers. Now?
Research by the global NGO ActionAid has found that the effects are already starting to be felt within Kashmir. In the valley, snow rarely falls and almost never sticks. The summertime levels of streams, rivers, springs, and ponds have dropped.
It's only going to get worse: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that the Himalayan glaciers (the source of the Indus River) may be almost entirely gone by 2035. At that point, Pakistan's choices get ugly: let its people starve, learn to cooperate with its enemy India in building dams, or escalate its insurgency against India.
Pakistan is only one example of climate change creating or escalating national security concerns. In 2007, a London-based organization compiled a list of countries with a high risk of armed conflict due to climate change. They found no fewer than 46 countries, or one in every four, including some of the world's most gravely unstable countries, such as Somalia, Nigeria, Iran, Colombia, Bolivia, Israel, Indonesia, Bosnia, Algeria, and Peru. [Diarist note: I do not agree that all countries on the above list are "gravely unstable."]
The nonpartisan Center for a New American Security warns that "turning the tide in Afghanistan may rest with water in Pakistan." Internal Pakistani crises threaten the stability of the United States' operations in Afghanistan...yet another point not considered by "Drill, baby, drill!"
ACES has two general themes: encouraging renewable energy and limiting carbon emissions, the main cause of climate change. No one pretends that passing ACES in the United States Senate is a magic bullet that will stop global climate change. However, ACES is President Obama's action item on climate change. Last week, Obama's chief Copenhagen negotiator, Todd Stern, told the House select global warming committee:
It is critical that the Senate now do its part to move this process forward in a timely manner. Nothing the United States can do is more important for the international negotiation process than passing robust, comprehensive clean energy legislation as soon as possible.
We are approaching this issue with the sense of urgency that it demands and are determined to do all we can to make the progress that is necessary to have a successful outcome in Copenhagen. Mr. Chairman, the world is going to make history over the course of the next months and years. We will either make it for the right reasons – because we found common ground and set ourselves on a path toward a new, sustainable, low-carbon model; or for the wrong reasons - because we blinked at the moment of truth and left our children and grandchildren to face the consequences. We have to get this right.
We have to get this right. We have to work together to pass ACES. You may have seen sporadic Adopt A Senator For ACES diaries over the last few weeks. I am coordinating a whip project in which a volunteer targets a particular Senator, ascertains and diaries the Senator's likely vote on ACES, and tracks the Senator's position as the bill moves through the Senate. Meteor Blades has previously written Adopt-A-Senator For ACES Targets Climate Legislation, and I originally announced Adopt A Senator for ACES, Win Friends, Influence Senate. Although 19 Senators have been adopted to date, there are plenty more to be adopted, including Mark Begich (D-AK), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Lindsay Graham (R-SC), and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). Please contact me (email address in profile) for details.