Climate change a real threat … just ask our military

Les Atchley’s March 23 My Turn piece, “Be cautious about spending trillions on climate change,” raises some interesting points. When I looked into his sources of information, though, they raised some disturbing questions as well. For example, PragerU isn’t an academic institution (even though it sounds like it); it’s a “conservative digital media organization,” according to Wikipedia. And one of its largest donors is the fracking billionaire Wilks brothers. So PragerU is pushing the continued use of fossil fuels and has a financial stake in the matter. Readers should be aware of that bias toward fossil fuels and minimizing action on climate change, especially if it involves reining in fossil fuel interests.

So who doesn’t have an agenda to push on this issue, you might ask? I suggest the U.S. military for one. You might be surprised to know the Pentagon is planning on very serious consequences from climate change. In fact, they are seeing those consequences now.

In an April 9, 2018, interview, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Col. Larry Wilkerson, stated that rising seas from climate change (and sinking land) will eventually force the U.S. Navy to relocate the Norfolk Shipyards in Virginia, costing billions. The climate change challenge impacts the global operations of all our armed forces. For example, a 2012 study by the American Security Project concluded that Guam’s military installations were among the five most vulnerable American ones worldwide due to coastal erosion, extreme weather, rising sea levels and other projected climate change impacts. Guam is essential to U.S. operations in Asia and the Middle East.

Climate change threatens our national security in other ways. Rising seas, increasing temperatures and increased drought will eventually displace the hundreds of millions of people who live in low-lying coastal areas or the burning deserts of the Middle East. For example, a severe drought in Syria forced farmers off their lands and helped trigger the Syrian conflict. Unstable nations across the Middle East are already facing water shortages that will only get worse as temperatures rise.

Mr. Atchley has concerns about the potential costs of climate action when there is less than 100 percent certainty. I argue that inaction in the face of substantial risks runs counter to sound planning—and common sense. As former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon Sullivan put it in a Center for Naval Analyses report: “If you wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something bad is going to happen on the battlefield.”

The concerns about climate change are not limited to our military and science communities. The global business community is also deeply concerned about the rising economic risks of climate change. Major multinational companies such as GM, Shell, and Johnson & Johnson are stepping up, and asking the U.S. Congress to pass a carbon tax that will enable them to help their businesses take the lead in fighting climate change. One reason for this shift is the balance between the exploding costs of climate change and the rapidly growing business opportunities in clean energy. There is a reason Ford Motors is investing $11 billion in electric vehicles and GM has committed to an all-electric future. China is in the game as well, committing $360 billion in renewable energy investment. Green technology is the future, and is already supplanting fossil energy just as cars supplanted horses.

Another consideration is the explosive growth of global investments divesting from fossil fuel industries, funds which now total over $5 trillion. Black Rock, the world’s largest asset management company, managing about $7 trillion in assets, staged a stockholder rebellion with Exxon Mobil over climate change last summer. With 62.3 percent of Exxon Mobil’s share value, investors voted to instruct the oil giant to report on the impact of global measures to keep climate change to 2 degrees C. Along with stockholders of other fossil fuel companies, they want to know what will happen to the value of their stock if a large percentage of oil and coal and gas reserves are not allowed to be burned, to meet worldwide climate change measures. Fossil fuel companies around the world are at severe risk of having their oil and gas reserves “stranded,” unable to be extracted in order to generate massive profit. Many of these fossil fuel giants have a strong financial incentive to distract and delay action in order to protect shareholder value — rather than act to protect our children’s future.

Military and business leaders are acting now to address climate change. They are doing this because the costs and risks of climate inaction far outweigh the costs of action. The health, property loss, infrastructure, and security costs of climate change are already costing us hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Meanwhile, there are trillions of dollars in economic opportunity. Why wait? We have much to gain through action, and much to lose if we don’t act now.

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Bill Irving is president of Climate Action CdA, a program of Kootenai Environmental Alliance.