Military Sharpens Focus on Climate Change

A Decline in Resources Is Projected to Cause Increasing Instability Overseas

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 15, 2007; A06

The U.S. military is increasingly focused on a potential national security threat: climate change.

Just last month the U.S. Army War College funded a two-day conference at the Triangle Institute for Security Studies titled "The National Security Implications of Global Climate Change." And tomorrow, a group of 11 retired senior generals will release a report saying that global warming "presents significant national security challenges to the United States," which it must address or face serious consequences.

The 63-page report -- which is being released a day before the U.N. Security Council holds its first-ever briefing on climate change -- lays out a detailed case for how global warming could destabilize vulnerable states in Africa and Asia and drive a flood of migrants to richer countries. It focuses on how climate change "can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world," in part by causing water shortages and damaging food production.

The study's authors, along with several other national security experts, confirmed last week that the military has begun studying possible future impacts of global warming with new intensity.

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