Posted on the White House website is an 11 page summary of how climate change is the cause of comprehensive national security threats including terrorism.
With climate change, certain types of extreme weather events and their impacts, including extreme heat, heavy downpours, floods, and droughts, have become more frequent and/or intense. In addition, warming is causing sea level to rise and glaciers and Arctic sea ice to melt. These and other aspects of climate change are disrupting people’s lives and damaging certain sectors of the economy. The national security implications of climate change impacts are far-reaching, as they may exacerbate existing stressors, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and political instability, providing enabling environments for terrorist activity abroad. For example, the impacts of climate change on key economic sectors, such as agriculture and water, can have profound effects on food security, posing threats to overall stability.
The implications of climate change on national security are not all beyond U.S. borders – they pose risks here at home. According to the Third National Climate Assessment, sea level rise, coupled with storm surge, will continue to increase the risk of major coastal impacts on transportation infrastructure, including both temporary and permanent flooding of airports, ports and harbors, roads, rail lines, tunnels, and bridges. Extreme weather events are also affecting energy production and delivery facilities, causing supply disruptions of varying lengths and magnitudes and affecting other infrastructure that depends on energy supply. Increasing risk of flooding affects human safety and health, property, infrastructure, economies, and ecology in many basins across the United States.
These impacts increase the frequency, scale, and complexity of future defense missions, requiring higher costs of military base maintenance and impacting the effectiveness of troops and equipment in conflict. Assessments are currently underway by the Department of Defense (DOD) to determine the national resources necessary to respond to these growing threats to U.S. national security. Read the full report here.
The climate change activists are out in full measure, where even Catholic priests have embraced the climate change agenda facing off with Exxon Mobile. Cant make this up.
In part from The Hill: Michael Crosby, who sponsored the resolution for a climate expert on behalf of a group of Milwaukee Catholic priests, said the oil and natural gas giant needs to better embrace renewable energy and to fight climate change. So who are these priests and why take on corporations?
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Catholic Religious Leaders Call for Action on Climate Change
[Denver, CO] Leaders of US orders of Catholic priests, brothers, and sisters issued aresolution calling their members to work for action on climate change.The members of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) and the LeadershipConference of Women Religious (LCWR), who represent more than 86,000 of thecountry’s Catholic sisters, brothers, and religious priests, met jointly in assembly inDenver, Colorado from August 1‐4. During the meeting, the two conferences resolved to“seek concrete ways to curb environmental degradation, mitigate its impact on thepoorest and most vulnerable people, and restore right relationships among all God’screation; and to foster a consciousness of care for God’s creation among all ourmembers, colleagues, institutions and those whom we serve.” The leaders noted that the increase in temperature on the earth will likely havewidespread consequences from mass extinctions to devastating impacts on the lives andlivelihoods of the poorest and most vulnerable human beings.
Here is a memo in part from their global association.
Religions and Climate Change
Fr. Sean McDonagh, SSC
I have been at many meetings of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) during the past decade. At almost all of these meetings religious groups have attempted to demonstrate that climate change has a serious ethical and religious dimension, mainly because it affects the poor and important ecosystems in a very negative way.
After visiting Nepal in May 2014, Ms Christiana Figueres the Secretary General of UNFCCC pointed out that, saving the Earth and its peoples from dangerous climate change is a moral and ethical issue, one that goes to the core of the world’s great faiths. She said that it was time for faith and religious institutions to find their voice and set their moral compass on one of the great humanitarian issues of our time.
At COP 20 in Lima, the Consejo Interreligiouso del Perú (the Council for Interreligious Dialogue) Religiones por la Paz (Religions for Peace) had a stand at the main venue and also sponsored a seminar at the NGO Centre at the Jockey Club of Peru. The title of the seminar was Climate Change and the Voice of the Faith Communities. The first speaker was Mons. Salvador Pineiro, the archbishop of Ayacucho and the President of the Episcopal Conference of Peru. He said that he was a city boy, born in Lima and had little understanding of rural life until he was appointed archbishop of Ayacucho. In conversation with a poor potato farmer he learned how climate changes was affecting the potato crop and making things more difficult for farmers during the past decade.
Raquel Cago, who is the executive director of the National Union of Evangelical Churches, said that the bible challenges Christians to take good care of God’s creation. Martin Kopp from the Federation of Lutheran Churches spoke very simply and succinctly about how the faith community should respond to climate change.
He made three suggestions:
The most important thing for Churches and Religions is to develop a credible theology of creation in each of their traditions:
His second recommendation was that the faith community must work together and lobby governments and industries to challenge them to take climate change seriously at local, national and global level. We need good laws and effective enforcement of these laws to protect the poor and the environment:
Finally, people need to do things however small to combat climate change. He gave an example of a choir in a Church in France. The members used to meet in the church for rehearsals even during the winter. This meant heating the large church, even through there were only a few people in the choir. Someone suggested they met in a smaller room and thus save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
