• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’ January 23, 2023
Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom January 23, 2023
IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia January 23, 2023
BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels January 17, 2023
Next
Prev

Trump ‘Security’ Strategy Stays Silent on Climate After US$131-Billion Disaster Season

December 19, 2017
Reading time: 4 minutes

Damien Connor/YouTube

Damien Connor/YouTube

 

Donald Trump unveiled a National Security Strategy this week that ignored threats posed by climate disruption and cast international efforts to rein in carbon pollution as an opportunity for American “energy dominance” through fossil fuel sales.

In a document that reached back to 19th century visions of international relations as a zero-sum competition among “great power” rivals, Trump largely tossed aside 100 years of international law- and institution-building. He also ignored repeated warnings from the United States’ own military and security advisors that climate change multiplies existing threats and poses new ones to that country’s ability to project its global dominance.

  • Concise headlines. Original content. Timely news and views from a select group of opinion leaders. Special extras.
  • Everything you need, nothing you don’t.
  • The Weekender: The climate news you need.
New!
Subscribe

Defying a year of unprecedented pummelling by storms and flames, the strategy Trump personally released on Monday cast climate change as an excuse for other countries to press “an anti-growth energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security interests.”

The strategy promised “U.S. leadership” to “counter” that agenda, selling an alternative message that, “given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil fuels to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty.”

Indeed, the U.S. administration has already shown its “leadership” on that front. Last week it launched a diplomatic effort to push fossil fuel on poor countries, in overt defiance of a campaign recently launched by Canada and the United Kingdom to encourage developing nations to opt instead for cleaner, less expensive renewable energy.

Trump’s strategy document—similar in form to others released by several U.S. presidents—is the former reality TV star’s “first comprehensive effort to describe an all-encompassing strategic worldview,” the New York Times writes.

It purports to focus his administration’s security thinking on efforts to best Russia and China in geopolitical rivalry. But the Washington Post slams the “incoherence” of its contents, while the Times observes that the document contained “little about dealing with the kind of cyber and information warfare techniques that Moscow used to try to influence the 2016 presidential election.”

Trump’s America will, however, double down on maintaining its standing nuclear threat to other countries as “the foundation of our strategy.”

Most strikingly, as alarm bells ring from science labs around the globe that humanity’s natural security is at best precarious, the Times observes, “Trump does not recognize the changing climate as a threat to national security. The document instead places climate under a section on embracing ‘energy dominance.’”

The change puts the White House “at odds with the Pentagon, which has continued to highlight national security threats from a changing climate, including refugee flows as a result of droughts and intensifying storms and the repercussions of rising sea waters,” the paper notes.

Indeed, in a striking contradiction, the U.S. General Accounting Office warned only last week that the American military “is failing to adequately plan for the risks that climate change poses to hundreds of overseas facilities,” InsideClimate News reports. And in March, veteran journalist Andy Revkin reported that Trump’s own defense secretary, James Mattis, cited climate change as a threat to America’s security interests in Congressional testimony.

The president’s insouciant dismissal of climate change also defied a comprehensive study released by the U.S. government’s own scientists last month which linked human-caused climate change to present-day threats to millions of Americans’ personal security. Those threats include fiercer storms of the kind that struck Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico this year, and wildfires like those that have left much of southern California “like a warzone” in the last month.

The dissonance was only compounded this week when, within hours of Trump’s security speech, the U.S. House of Representatives revealed what Politico calls “a staggering $81 billion disaster aid package, the largest single funding request for natural calamities in U.S. history.”

“If approved,” Politico notes, “Congress will have spent more than $130 billion on a spate of deadly hurricanes and wildfires this fall, outpacing the total amount of aid after both Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.”

All of those catastrophes have been linked to climate change. And indeed, it’s unclear how closely America’s military and other public service professionals will follow their commander-in-chief’s cavalier dismissal of climate effects.

“Climate change impacts are recognized by our national security leadership as ‘facts on the ground,’” retired Rear Admiral David Titley, director of the Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk at Pennsylvania State University, told E&E News [subs req’d], “and this will continue even if they aren’t explicitly recognized’ in the National Security Strategy.

And as Climate News Network observed, Trump himself, famous for not reading briefing documents or much else, signed the latest U.S. National Defense Authorization Act into law December 12. It requires the Pentagon “to report on how military installations and overseas staff may be vulnerable to climate change over the next two decades.”



in Climate Denial & Greenwashing, Drought, Famine & Wildfires, Energy Politics, International Security & War, Severe Storms & Flooding, United States

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

RL0919/wikimedia commons
Finance & Investment

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
1.9k
@tongbingxue/Twitter
Ending Emissions

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
227
Rachel Notley/Facebook
Jobs & Training

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
221

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
1.9k
Weirton, WV by Jon Dawson/flickr

IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia

January 23, 2023
445
Kenuoene/pixabay

$50B Opportunity Means ‘Go Time’ for Canadian Renewables: CanREA CEO

December 19, 2022
541
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
168
Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
221
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
227

Recent Posts

Sergio Boscaino/flickr

Dubai Mulls Quitting C40 Cities Over ‘Costly’ Climate Target

January 24, 2023
75
hangela/pixabay

New UK Coal Mine Faces Two Legal Challenges

January 24, 2023
38

Gas Stoves Enter U.S. Climate Culture War, Become ‘Bellwether’ for Industry

January 22, 2023
69
Jeff Hitchcock/flickr.

BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels

January 23, 2023
486

Exxon Had the Right Global Warming Numbers Through Decades of Denial: Study

January 17, 2023
221
willenhallwench / Pixabay

Ontario Greenwashes with ‘Misleading, Illegitimate’ Emission Credits

January 16, 2023
305
Next Post
Koshy Koshy/Wikipedia

IEA’s ‘Stagnant’ Future May Be An Unwarranted Hope for Coal

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}