Climate Change and Security

August 12th 2009

The headline above the fold on the front page of the New York Times on August 9th was Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security, and while reading the article I thought I heard the discussion of global warming click into a new gear. The opening paragraph says “Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.” Why is it that we need to invoke the specter of war, stability and safety before many of us are motivated?

Every student at Derryfield should be challenged to learn about climate change, think about their role with respect to both causation and solutions, and develop their own understanding of what could be this generation’s defining global concern. The world needs leaders in this effort, and I want Derryfield students to be at the front of generating peaceful solutions. In this regard, I am in complete agreement with the article when it states “If the United States does not lead the world in reducing fossil-fuel consumption and thus emissions of global warming gases, proponents of this view say, a series of global environmental, social, political and possibly military crises loom that the nation will urgently have to address.”

No doubt commitment to reversing climate change has many facets, but a key one for me is the sense that the effort is a form of proactive peaceful conflict resolution. As our society and our schools get clearer that “rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest,” I hope we will have a similar understanding that our efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle are also a form of peace activism. Meanwhile, the cost of doing nothing is becoming more apparent, more urgent, and more militarized.