The indispensable Jeffrey Gettleman has a heart-wrenching dispatch on Dot Earth: We walked through a camp for displaced people, absorbing the human wreckage all around us. There were stick-skinny children with horrible, rattling coughs that sounded like an old Chevy Nova trying to start up on a cold morning. Emaciated goats snacked on piles of…Continue Reading…
It’s called the Center on Climate Change and National Security. This strikes me as huge news, not so much because it further institutionalizes and legitimizes climate change as a national security issue, but because the center’s mission will necessarily overlap with a broader suite of environmental issues, as indicated by the CIA’s own press release:…Continue Reading…
Who knew (or remembers) that George Kennan, the father of U.S. containment policy, once argued for a world environmental organization? Will Rogers over at Natural Security has a nice retrospective post on Kennan’s 1970s clarion call, which appeared in the pages of Foreign Policy. As Rogers summarizes, Kennan notably advanced the international environmental governance debate…Continue Reading…
The nascent field of environmental security better be ready for prime time, because this front-page NYT story on Sunday is sure to inject the national security/climate change nexus into the public debate. It’ll be interesting to see how the leading environmental security advocates respond to John Broder’s NYT article. (Keep an eye here and here.)…Continue Reading…
The print media may be on life-support but they still have the capacity to influence policymakers. Check out this neat catch by Christine Parthemore over at Natural Security. Her post is a brief tale of two seemingly unremarkable Time magazine articles that appear to have had undue influence on two members (including the chairman) of…Continue Reading…
UPDATE: [Here are some stories on the CNA report from BusinessWeek, DefenseNews, and ClimateWire. Additionally, the DOD Energy Blog weighs in, and so does The New Security Beat.] Nice timing by CNA, issuing this new report today by its Military Advisory Board, entitled, “Powering America’s Defense: Energy and Risks to National Security.” Climate change is…Continue Reading…
It’s not news that some sectors (and top brass) in the U.S. military are taking environmental issues seriously. But what’s news to me is that a legendary Vietnamese war general–someone who played an instrumental role in defeating France and then the U.S.– has suddenly gone green. According to this Grist story, Gen.Vo Nguyen Giap is…Continue Reading…
This op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor suggests that “environmental engagement” could serve as sort of a back-door channel for easing U.S.-China tensions: Environmental collaboration is unlikely to hit politically sensitive buttons, and thus offers great potential to deepen dialogue and cooperation. Military-to-military dialogue can facilitate the sharing of best practices on a range of…Continue Reading…
Is there a difference between non-military experts serving alongside combatant soldiers in a war and those that are part of a peacekeeping force in a war-torn country? I wondered about this today after reading about plans to add “green” advisors to U.N peacekeeping operations in countries where chronic instability is fueled by over-exploitation of the…Continue Reading…
Environmental security is a topic rarely discussed outside Washington think tanks. Not anymore. This semester, the U.S. Academy at West Point is offering a course to Geography majors that examines “how the environment can act as a catalyst for conflict or simply as an amplifier of existing problems.” The goal is to educate future Army…Continue Reading…