Durbin, Hagel say global warming a national security threat

The bill, sponsored by Senators Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), would require the CIA and Pentagon to assess the national security implications of climate change. Among other things, the "Global Climate Change Security Oversight Act" would order the Pentagon to undertake a series of war games to determine how global warming could affect U.S. security. It would be a "serious mistake," states Durbin, not to plan for what he calls the "geopolitical consequences" of global warming.

The measure also calls for the director of national intelligence to conduct the first-ever National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on global warming. NIEs, according to a press release from Senator Durbin's office, are the government's "most authoritative written judgments concerning national security issues and are developed to address the most serious of threats." They require the various intelligence agencies to combine, correlate, and evaluate strategic intelligence on potential security threats.

George Landrith, president of the Frontiers of Freedom Institute (FFI), says the idea behind the Durbin-Hagel proposal is "a big waste of time and effort" at a period when numerous security issues need to be addressed.

"We've seen in the last several years, leading up to 9/11, lots of intelligence and security failures," Landrith notes. "And it seems to me that diverting [the agencies'] attention with things that matter, like protecting Americans from people who want to kill them, would be a much higher priority than worrying about whether temperature change is going to change by one degree over the next hundred years

"I just don't see how that military's problem," says the FFI leader, who admits that climate change does not even make his "top one-thousand list."

Landrith believes that Durbin and Hagel have bought into the politically correct hype surrounding global warming. Former Vice President Al Gore and "the global-warming alarmists at the U.N," says Landrith, have successfully convinced people that global warming is real, that the science behind it is certain, and that there is no serious debate about its reality.

"And of course, that's not true," says Landrith. "I talk to scientists everyday who question it and scratch their head [about what global-warming advocates are saying]." And to the extent that there is a consensus about global warming, he adds, "it seems that there's a political consensus -- which is [when] politicians have licked their finger, stuck it in the air, and they have a sense that the breeze is blowing in a certain direction ...."

Landrith says Durbin's and Hagel's efforts reflect the typical approach in Washington -- "get in the newspaper by pretending to address serious problems when you're in fact doing nothing." The two senators predict their legislation will be approved with broad support. Congressman Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) plans to introduce a companion bill in the House.
 
 
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