Dan Coats Delivers Climate Reality During National Security Briefing To US Senate

Last Tuesday, Dan Coats, director of National Intelligence, spoke to the Senate Select Committee on National Intelligence about the annual 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community report. His testimony, which stressed the grave threat climate change poses to national security, was just the latest in a long line of warnings from intelligence, military and scientific experts who President Trump continues to attack. At his State of the Union speech next week, Trump is likely to continue this pattern, once again showing his disregard for the health and safety of Americans who are already grappling with the costly and harmful impacts of climate change.

An independent agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) serves the 17 organizations that comprise the intelligence community to provide intelligence to protect American lives and America’s interests throughout the world. The Worldwide Threat Assessment is a new, unclassified report but it has been argued that the findings in the report aren’t really “news.” However, in the age of Trump, what is significant is Coats’ testimony that climate change is a national security threat. In his opening oral statement before turning to his prepared remarks, Coats emphasized that ODNI’s mission is to “seek the truth and speak the truth.” Climate change is specifically mentioned in the Human Security section of the report:

“Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond. Climate hazards such as extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea level rise, soil degradation, and acidifying oceans are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security. Irreversible damage to ecosystems and habitats will undermine the economic benefits they provide, worsened by air, soil, water, and marine pollution.”

This year is the third time during the Trump administration (see the 2018 and 2017 annual reports) that climate change was included in the annual threat assessment report. While rare, it’s not the first time the Trump administration released climate change findings and policies. In 2017, Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) fiscal year 2018 (FY 18) into law. The NDAA FY18 mandated that the Department of Defense (DoD) develop a report on the military sites most vulnerable to climate-related risks. DoD has recently released that report which finds that installations across military branches are already affected by a number of climate change impacts:

two-thirds of the 79 installations it reviewed are vulnerable to current or future recurrent flooding;
more than 50 percent are vulnerable to current or future drought; and
roughly half are vulnerable to wildfires.


EDIT

https://blog.ucsusa.org/shana-udvardy/state-of-the-union-not-strong-on-climate?_ga=2.227216669.1885589987.1549215039-1805368100.1549215039