Climate change: everyone has heard of it, not everyone is willing to accept it. Climate change seems like an undefeatable opponent, it’s caused by activities we don’t want to stop and it keeps getting worse. The more we hear about how bad things are getting, the more it sounds like a difficult and expensive battle, and a battle without any instant gratification, at that.

However, the most recent report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), offers a glimmer of hope. The report says that lessening emissions in order to stabilize the climate is in fact quite affordable – only if we act now and we act fast.

The report says (click here to read the summary or the full report, available tomorrow) that if we act now we can hold back the onward projector of damaging climate change to some extent, whereas if we wait, we’ll have to put more effort into actually reversing the effects, which would likely be more expensive.

German economist Ottmar Edenhofer, who co-chaired the report committee, told the New York Times, “If we lose another decade, it becomes extremely costly to achieve climate stabilization.”

It would be nice to say that in the future there exists this huge, industrial sized vacuum that could easily just suck up all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but it’s probably not worth betting the future of humanity on it.

Climate change is real and it is eminent. It could be devastating to humanity as we know it; however, there are some who still don’t believe that climate change is manmade.

Seth Borenstein, the Associated Press’s science correspondent, has given us a fine barometer by which to measure the scientific certainty that humans are heating the planet. He reports that the world’s climatologists are now gearing up to officially proclaim that they are 95 percent certain that humans are to blame for global warming.

Keep in mind that in science, nothing is 100 percent sure – not even the law of gravity. Science is an arduous, time-intensive process and the fact that a stunning 95 percent of scientists in a given field agree on a dominant theory is all but unheard of.

Let’s put this into perspective.

Here are a few things that scientists are just as or less certain about than climate change:

That cigarettes kill

The age of the universe

That vitamins make you healthy

Scientists are just as confident in the fact that smoking gives you cancer and the age of the universe, as they are that carbon pollution causes climate change. They are more certain that climate change is manmade than they are that eating vitamins is healthy.

But let’s forget the climatologists and scientist for a second and let the military explain, in its own words, verbatim, what climate change is and why we should be very worried about it.

The Pentagon’s thinking is revealed plainly and publicly in its own 2014 Quadrennial Review, which features no fewer than eight direct, specific and unambiguous evaluations of climate change as it relates to geopolitics and military strategy.

It goes something like this:

1. Climate change poses another significant challenge for the United States and the  world at large. As greenhouse gas emissions increase, sea levels are rising, average global temperatures are increasing, and severe weather patterns are accelerating. These changes, coupled with other global dynamics, including growing, urbanizing, more affluent populations, and substantial economic growth in India, China, Brazil, and other nations, will devastate homes, land, and infrastructure.

2. Climate change may exacerbate water scarcity and lead to sharp increases in food costs.

3. The pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world. These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions – conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.

4. The impacts of climate change may increase the frequency, scale, and complexity of future missions, including defense support to civil authorities, while at the same time undermining the capacity of our domestic installations to support training activities. Our actions to increase energy and water security, including investments in energy efficiency, new technologies, and renewable energy sources, will increase the resiliency of our installations and help mitigate these effects.

In short, the Pentagon has concluded that climate change will likely breed more terrorism, more unrest and more conflict.

And I’m not done. Not only does the military address what climate change is and what could happen if the situation is allowed to advance, the military enumerated its four-point plan to actively cope with and adapt to its missions to the changing climate:

1. The Department will employ creative ways to address the impact of climate change, which will continue to affect the operating environment and the roles and missions that U.S. Armed Forces undertake.

2.The Department will remain ready to operate in a changing environment amid the challenges of climate change and environmental damage. We have increased our preparedness for the consequences of environmental damage and continue to seek to mitigate these risks while taking advantage of opportunities. The Department’s operational readiness hinges on unimpeded access to land, air, and sea training and test space.

3. Consequently, we will complete a comprehensive assessment of all installations to assess the potential impacts of climate change on our missions and operational resiliency, and develop and implement plans to adapt as required.

4. Climate change also creates both a need and an opportunity for nations to work together, which the Department will seize through a range of initiatives. We are developing new policies, strategies, and plans, including the Department’s Arctic Strategy and our work in building humanitarian assistance and disaster response capabilities, both within the Department and with our allies and partners. 

The military not only believes in climate change, but it believes that it warrants active mitigation, that it is a “threat multiplier,” a terrorist incubator and an all around stressor to global stability. It believes in taking action.

So, like I said before, correcting climate change and mitigation greenhouse gas emissions takes money, so who is going to foot the ever-growing bill?

The image of responsibility is muddled due to the classification of countries as developed or developing and what that means for their respective responsibilities. How much should developed countries help out developing countries? Should fast-developing countries like China be classed along with much poorer developing nations? How much should a country’s past emissions be taken into account?

The argument becomes even more redundant when the AP reports that diagrams in leaked drafts of the report that showed that a main force behind rising emissions were the increasing energy needs of fast-growing countries like China were deleted from the final version.

It’s not like it’s news that that we need to reduce emissions from fossil fuels to stem global warming, but until governments can agree on a course of action, we’ll never see the kind of united progress that would be the most effective solution.

Christina Chastain
Marketing and Strategic Partnerships Coordinator