Hill briefing on warming highlights military, health impacts

Hill briefing on warming highlights military, health impacts

Jean Chemnick, E&E reporter

Published: Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Science and national security experts visited Capitol Hill last night to brief an audience of congressional staffers on the toll climate change is already taking on public well-being, at home and around the world.

The panel featured Thomas Armstrong, executive director of the science and technology policy office at U.S. Global Change Research Program, which earlier this month released a comprehensive assessment of current and future climate impacts on the United States. This third National Climate Assessment went beyond detailing the basic science of climate-related effects to wade into issues of adaptation and mitigation for the first time, and Armstrong said future assessments would delve even more into solutions.

Armstrong expressed frustration about the pace of action on the issue and spoke of the need to better communicate its urgency. He said he suggested that President Obama offer one-on-one interviews to television meteorologists as a way of drawing attention to the NCA's findings -- a communications strategy that was praised by public relations experts for earning the report additional media coverage.

The report showed that regions across the country are already feeling the effects of climate change. Florida's Miami-Dade County, New Orleans and other communities have already begun to pay the price for rising sea levels and higher storm surges that the report links to man-made warming -- and those effects will continue to worsen, it says, as continued warming pushes seas 1 to 4 feet higher by the century's end.

"This is not a doomsday message; these are the scientific facts," Armstrong said. "This is the world we live in."

But Armstrong said the report also showed that combating climate change offers economic and job-creation opportunities.

Sharon Burke, a former assistant secretary of Defense responsible for energy issues, said that the military has long been preparing for the changes to its operations and workload that would be wrought by climate change.

"The military is very pragmatic," she said. "This is a department that plans way in advance."

The Defense Department's 2010 Quadrennial Review named climate change as an accelerant to conflict around the world, as more people move into urban areas in search of resources that have become scarce elsewhere, or to flee climate-driven disasters. These changes have the potential to create new flashpoints and humanitarian crises that the U.S. military could be asked to respond to, she said, and the department is working to assess those in advance.

Burke, who is now a senior adviser at the New America Foundation, noted that climate change may also affect DOD's 200 installations around the world -- often in areas likely to be affected by drought, flood or sea-level rise.

"They have a road map for adaptation; they're not wasting time," she said. "They're going to do what they have to do to deal with the reality of this."

But Burke cautioned that civilian governments around the world should not expect their militaries to shoulder the burden of responding to climate stressors that policymakers have been slow to prepare for.

"Don't lean on the military as a first responder or a last resort at the expense of building resiliency capacity," she said. The military's core function would continue to be fighting wars, not implementing climate policy.

The panel spoke before a private screening of an episode of Showtime's "Years of Living Dangerously," which showed actor Matt Damon exploring the health effects of more frequent and severe health waves in the United States.

"I would argue that climate change is the most critical public health effect of this century," said Sabrina McCormick, an associate professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University who produced the series' health-related storylines.

Epidemiologists are already seeing diseases move into new regions as warming temperatures make areas like Western Europe and the United States more hospitable to pathogens.

For example, warmer temperatures may be contributing to an epidemic of valley fever in the southwestern United States.

But while it contributes to other ills, heat itself is treacherous, McCormick said. Tens of thousands of people have already died in heat waves in the last decade or two, including 70,000 during an event in Western Europe in 2003.

The link between health and climate change is a way to make the issue "tangible, real and actionable" to the public, McCormick said.

Anne Kelly of the business action group Ceres said that businesses are already looking at the way climate change will affect their investments. But most are not pushing elected officials for legislation because there is a general sense that bipartisan action is off the table for the moment.

Business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have had a role, she said, in creating a legislative climate where comprehensive climate legislation cannot pass.

"There are trade associations that have gotten in the way of progress, and some of our most progressive corporations are members of those associations," said Kelly, adding that Ceres is asking those companies to sever ties with those groups. "We need strict alignment between the inside game and the outside game."

The event was sponsored by the Senate Climate Action Task Force and attended by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), one of its co-chairmen. It came before today's indoor rally by the task force and other Democratic-only caucuses to raise awareness of climate change (E&E Daily, May 21).

It was sponsored by the Senate Climate Action Task Force and the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition.