The following explains what climate change is and why it is a challenge to international stability. Next is an explication of the two most significant economic implications of global climate change for US national security.
Climate Change is a broad term that describes various long term observable weather trends. These trends include temperature, precipitation amount, precipitation frequency, precipitation intensity, wind speed and direction. Climate change can reference various size locations and geographic types, such as an island, the Antarctic, an ocean, a continent, a hemisphere, or the entire earth. The current worldwide trend of climate change is global warming. Global warming has led to long periods of drought in various regions. Prolonged drought has been linked to mass migration. Drought has also led to decreased agricultural output, and increased food prices. Mass migration and food price spikes have both been factors in international instability. Food price increases “in the Middle
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As climate change gradually warms the globe, more of the water currently trapped in the form of ice will melt and find its way to the ocean. Rising sea levels and more intense storms attributed to other aspects of climate change will increasingly threaten coastal floodplains and the infrastructure “including oil and gas refineries, storage tanks, power plants, and electricity transmission lines” that are all located there. In terms of dollars, by the year 2100 between $238 billion and $507 billion worth of US property is likely to be below sea level. Much of the energy sector and its infrastructure is operated, or owned outright, by private industry. As such even a whole of government answer won’t be sufficient; it will require a whole of society solution to combat climate change on the US coastal