Latest in Climate Change and Security
For the last 30 years, international negotiators have been seeking a lasting solution to climate change. Yet as the science gets clearer, an effective treaty regime remains elusive.
At least until 2050, climate change will remain a persistent but manageable threat. But by 2100, climate-related national security threats could be existential.
National security stakeholders largely agree that climate change is a threat. The ways in which that threat will manifest remain up for debate.
The 2018 NDAA includes provisions to ready the military for the national-security implications of climate change, but it’s emphasis on resilience may be overly cautious.
Last Thursday and Friday, the United States and Mexico co-hosted top officials from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and other countries for the "Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America." As the name suggests, the gathering aimed to spur a wide-ranging conversation for improving the region’s economic conditions, tackling gangs and organized crime, and slowing U.S.-bound migration.
In the middle of the last century, Dr. Murdock Head, a George Washington University professor, acquired an old manor house and farm known as Airlie outside the nation’s capital. Dr. Head wanted to create a place where experts and organizations could meet in a neutral environment to analyze the pressing issues of the day.
International law, developed over centuries of interactions among nations with leaders with egos and agendas at least as large as Donald Trump’s, has evolved precisely to ensure continuity among the community of states and to moderate the effect of major disruptions such as Trump’s recent announcement. If these mechanisms are utilized as intended by both domestic and international constituencies, the planet and the climate may yet survive Trump’s frontal assault.
Without the Paris Agreement, we are moving ever closer toward climate hell.
Perhaps McGahn, Pruitt, and others worry that judges could use the Paris Accord to push back against the EPA’s upcoming regulatory reforms. That's not an unreasonable concern.
President Trump’s campaign promise to “cancel” the Paris Agreement, and his subsequent statement that he has an “open mind” on the question, will now be transported to the multilateral stage in a setting of high politics.