Americans endure one myth upon another. These rumors always promote business — somebody’s business – and/or government.
For more than 40 years we have heard at one time or another about the coming “global ice age,” the “ozone scare,” “global warming,” and now “climate change.”
The world thrives on these rumors. People seem to love them. Few inquire as to who might profit from rumors. Of course, we never know the whole truth until later.
What happened to some of the above rumors? Well, the “global ice age” turned into “global warming” which became “climate change” which produced a push for carbon taxes and a required purchase of “carbon credits” to be “sold” by “energy conscious” multinational corporations. Carbon credits are possibly greater fictions than the U.S. dollar.
The ozone scare seemed to have benefited DuPont. DuPont’s Freon patent was up, so the “bad effects” of Freon on the ozone spontaneously appeared. Freon was, of course, replaced with a new product patented by, guess who? DuPont!
But the global warming/climate change scaremongers seem to never quit; no matter how flat their predictions of global calamity fall.
This week we learned from a Council on Foreign Relations-connected think tank called the American Security Project that climate change is not a partisan issue (not sure who thought it was); it’s a national and global security issue.
The gist of ASP’s message — presented in a report from Nevada Public Radio made as ASP members toured two Nevada Air Force bases and spread their propaganda gave a talk — is that climate change is a threat to national security and global security because it is one of several factors leading to displacement of people. When communities run out of water or can’t grow food or they are flooded out of their homes because of climate change, ASP says, people become displaced refugees. Displaced refugees destabilize the communities they move to, leading to personal insecurity which becomes global insecurity, which leads to required military involvement.
ASP is headed by retired Marine Brigadier General Stephen A. Cheney (CFR member) who, among other jobs, once served as assistant to then Secretaries of Defense (later VP) Dick Cheney (who oversaw the displacement and deaths of millions of Iraqis) and Les Aspin (who oversaw the displacement and deaths of some 2.3 million people in Bosnia-Herzogovenia). The organization is described in media reports as “a group of former military people, current military leaders, government officials and academics who are warning about the intersection of issues such as climate, energy, and space with U.S. national security.” And their view is shared by President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense James Mattis.
In an op-ed published at TheHill.com on November 28, 2014, Cheney (the ASP head, not the former SecDef and VP) and one of his lackeys at ASP wrote:
The U.S. Department of Defense reminds us that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. Our military bases are vulnerable and will require expensive investments to simply stay above water. Our homeland security is directly threatened by extreme weather events. And, climate change will act as a “threat multiplier” that increases the risks of conflict around the world.
While no war is caused by temperature increases alone, the effects of climate change – drought, sea level rise, or extreme weather events – will amplify already existing threats like hunger, poverty, refugee migration, and resource conflicts. The American military will be called to intervene, even as we react to impacts at home, and that means that we must prepare.
Of course, the greatest threat to global instability is the U.S. military — as we’ve seen lately in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc. — with its bases around the globe ready to launch at a moment’s notice a missile strike “for the children” or to instigate regime change or to make way for a new pipeline for a crony corporation or favored oligarch across the territory of some recalcitrant and out-of-U.S. favor dictator. And if they are about to be “under water” because of climate change, perhaps the bases should just be closed down. With more than 600 bases around the globe (that we know about) surely there is one close enough to step in and take on the endangered base’s duties.
But there’s money to made. ASP is partnered with something called the Green Climate Fund (GCF), a work of the U.S. Treasury Department described as “a new multilateral fund… that will reduce climate vulnerabilities and increase the resources that partner countries can devote to deploying cleaner energy technologies. These are smart, cost-effective ways to integrate our foreign policy, energy security, and national security goals.”
The U.S. pledged $3 billion to the GCF, and additional commitments have been obtained from other countries, bringing the total in the fund to $9.3 billion. No doubt there’s a long list of CFR-related multinational corporations and non-governmental agencies that will benefit from the largess while saving the planet.
But not to worry, Cheney assures us the expenditure is worth it. He writes:
America’s $3 billion pledge is cost-effective because it will address the threats presented by climate change before American troops have to be deployed. This investment is a continuation of American leadership: in 2008, the Bush Administration gave $2 billion of a worldwide $8 billion investment in the Climate Investment Fund, a predecessor to this fund.
Well, we certainly wouldn’t want American troops to encounter anything like the British troops did outside Chartres, France in the 14th century… a severe weather event undoubtedly caused by climate change.
And putting a capper on the absurdity from the Nevada visit, Dr. Maureen McCarthy, a senior researcher in physics at University of Nevada, Reno and the Desert Research Institute, says that what we have to worry about going forward is climate extremes.
It won’t just get steadily five or 10 degrees hotter, she says. We might experience a few years of 20 degrees higher, then a few with lots of snow, rain, floods and cooler temperatures.
Or as we less learned people call it, weather.
But Dr. McCarthy assures us it’s not too late to do something about the climate change/national security issue, giving us this bit of wisdom:
“If you look climatologically at Southern Nevada — just from a cold calculus of science — nobody should be living here. Quite clearly, this community clearly has learned how to adapt to an extreme environment,” McCarthy said, “So it’s not bleak. We aren’t starting from scratch. We are starting from a place where particularly Nevadans have learned how to adapt.”
I guess nobody told the Southern Paiute, Western Shoshone and Aha Macav Mohave Indians that “nobody should be living” in Southern Nevada. They lived there for thousands of years until somebody else decided they wanted to live there and they were displaced by gold miners, settlers and the U.S. military. Climate change had nothing to do with it.
