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The Military Earth United States

US Military Could Collapse Within 20 Years Due To Climate Change, Report Commissioned By Pentagon Says (vice.com) 262

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: According to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war. The study found that the U.S. military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades, the report notes. The senior U.S. government officials who wrote the report are from several key agencies including the Army, Defense Intelligence Agency, and NASA. The study called on the Pentagon to urgently prepare for the possibility that domestic power, water, and food systems might collapse due to the impacts of climate change as we near mid-century. The report was commissioned by General Mark Milley, Trump's new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, making him the highest-ranking military officer in the country (the report also puts him at odds with Trump, who does not take climate change seriously.)

The report, titled Implications of Climate Change for the U.S. Army, was launched by the U.S. Army War College in partnership with NASA in May at the Wilson Center in Washington DC. The report was commissioned by Gen. Milley during his previous role as the Army's Chief of Staff. It was made publicly available in August via the Center for Climate and Security, but didn't get a lot of attention at the time. The two most prominent scenarios in the report focus on the risk of a collapse of the power grid within "the next 20 years," and the danger of disease epidemics. Both could be triggered by climate change in the near-term, it notes. The report also warns that the U.S. military should prepare for new foreign interventions in Syria-style conflicts, triggered due to climate-related impacts. Bangladesh in particular is highlighted as the most vulnerable country to climate collapse in the world.
The report recommends the U.S. military should take advantage of the Arctic's hydrocarbon resources and new transit routes to repel Russian encroachment.

"But without urgent reforms, the report warns that the U.S. military itself could end up effectively collapsing as it tries to respond to climate collapse," adds Motherboard. "It could lose capacity to contain threats in the U.S. and could wilt into 'mission failure' abroad due to inadequate water supplies."
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US Military Could Collapse Within 20 Years Due To Climate Change, Report Commissioned By Pentagon Says

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  • but this is an invitation to create supposed survivors of yet another human created condition beyond nuclear holocaust.

    It's pretty self-serving, considering the US Military if treated as a country, has the 13th highest carbon emissions.

    The report will try to justify trillions in investments when the US infrastructure is already crumbling, especially clean water, electrical grid, and other competing public interests.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      US electric tanks to save energy.
      Like Germany tested in WW2..
      Go full Operation Paperclip and find the hidden and very advanced German electric tank plans...
      New US tanks powered by the sun.
      A ceasefire while the US tanks park to get their needed solar energy each day. For the earth.
      All sides of any conflict will totally understand.
  • If water scarce then your adversaries face same threat. Get it first. Military cleverly looking for new angles to secure their funding. But security is their mission so breathable air , water and food a key area to consider. Oblivion is also a great threat. At least a discussion might help call to action greater collaboration across the planet.
  • by Z80a ( 971949 ) on Thursday October 24, 2019 @07:12PM (#59344494)

    When you have a situation where in many cases, you're legally barred to compete with the 2-3 companies that control the army, they will end up overpricing things to a point the US Military can't afford anymore.

  • by Vanyle ( 5553318 ) on Thursday October 24, 2019 @07:20PM (#59344504)
    Are these the same people who drafted the Zombie Apocalypse Plan? http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2... [turner.com]
  • by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Thursday October 24, 2019 @07:22PM (#59344508) Journal
    Testing for IQ. Academic ability and fitness.
    The ability to carry what is needed for war. To out think and out smart the rest of the world.
    Find more of the people who want to join and who have the ability to go to war.

    The US mil wont collapse due to the generations of ability.
    Stop spending so much extra money on contractors doing work the US mil could do for less. Put that gov money back into the actual mil.
    Lots of contractor work could be done by people the US mil pays everyday. Learn new skills while in the mil?

    Re "domestic power, water, and food systems might collapse"
    The US mil can look after its own water supply. Its something any advanced mil has the skills to do globally..
    Power? The US mil can work in nations with no power at all.
    Every US mil site is planned to "work" with a total loss of power. Then bring its own power back on. Then transport fuel in to keep the power on.
    Food? Lots of nations friendly to the US sell "food". Feeding the US mil from that imported food is "ships" and trade should not be beyond a nations Navy.

    Why should the US prepare for new foreign interventions in Syria-style conflicts?
    Support every failed nation? Spend US money on failed nations?
    Should that US money not go to a US mil that is about to "collapse" before "new foreign interventions"?
    If the US mil is about to "collapse" how can it do "new foreign interventions"?
    The US troops would fly into a "Bangladesh" and never expect any more support? Be surrounded by another nations mil with no support for what reason?
    If the US mil was so near "collapse" it would stay in very friendly nations and send support, ensure trade back to the USA...

    Re "Russian encroachment"
    When the US enters "Arctic's hydrocarbon resources" areas its good and for freedom?
    When Russian enters its own "Arctic's hydrocarbon resources" areas its bad encroachment?
  • https://climateandsecurity.fil... [wordpress.com]

    All you need is the executive summary for good comedy.

  • by stevent1965 ( 4521547 ) on Thursday October 24, 2019 @07:28PM (#59344520)
    As if the U.S. gives a fuck about Bangladesh. Either flooding or arsenic poisoning will kill them all, eventually. No need for our involvement. On a more serious note, the purpose of reports such as this is to analyze, categorize, and rank all potential threats to national security. I have yet to read where climate change is linked to possible pandemics, but whatever....Power grid? Hello, California! National power grid?....crickets. These are possibilities, not certainties, and I am glad the military is considering all of them seriously, independently of the orange one's antipathy to everything non-orange.
  • 1. We've got workable electric engines in a variety of chasis that scale well enough for basic use.

    2. Counter to 1, we don't have enough production capacity to match all our needs, to complete all aspects of industry and private needs. But that is rapidly improving, including high-scale battery production.

    3. Military usage classically gets much higher priority than private usage.

    Combine all 3, and until the ENTIRE economy collapses past any recognition, the military will be fed almost everything until a

  • all you'll need is the Space Force.

  • by melted ( 227442 ) on Thursday October 24, 2019 @08:11PM (#59344636) Homepage

    I'm old enough to remember Al Gore telling us that Florida will be underwater in 10 years, there'd be no polar bears, and we'd have more frequent super hurricanes. That was right before he bought a beachfront mansion in California. This is why most of the people who are super fervent about climate change are below 30: they aren't old enough to remember all the previous prognostications that also did not come true. Such as, well, Ice Age by the year 2000, which "97% of scientists" agreed would happen, back in the 80s. The "97% of scientists" figure BTW, is also a lie. Here's the article that explains it in detail: https://www.forbes.com/sites/a... [forbes.com]

    That's not to say the climate isn't chaging, but if you're over 40, you've experienced several waves of doom and gloom already, and none of the predicted deadly effects have panned out even in the slightest so far.

    • by Jack9 ( 11421 )

      The glaciers are melting, not encroaching, causing worldwide water levels to rise. So some of the deadly effects have panned out in the slightest. Ever so slightly. It's not going to be Waterworld, but things have visibly changed. I'm very sure we're not going into another Ice Age, following modern trends.

      • by melted ( 227442 ) on Thursday October 24, 2019 @11:01PM (#59345066) Homepage

        OK, I'll bite. WHERE did they pan out in a way that's visible, let alone directly causative to deaths of millions of people? If you were to believe climate alarmists in the 80's, the death toll is supposed to be in the hundreds of millions by now. Last I checked Florida is still there, the population of polar bears is increasing, and the temperature rise is nowhere near what was predicted by most models. And that's before you consider that historical temperature data gets "revised" from time to time or made up outright, and no satellite measurements (which are somewhat more reliable due to increased coverage) exist before the late 80s.

        Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Especially claims that could cost the world economy tens of trillions of dollars, and may not improve the situation because the models were wrong.

    • >"That's not to say the climate isn't chaging, but if you're over 40, you've experienced several waves of doom and gloom already, and none of the predicted deadly effects have panned out even in the slightest so far."

      Exactly. All this hysteria is, quite frankly, exhausting... if it weren't also so comedic. We need to do better for the environment and CO emissions. That is "duh." Whatever WE do won't make that much difference in the world as a whole, unless other countries follow.... unless what we do

    • Bull shit. MOST of the predictions have in fact happened. The reason you believe what you do is simple.

      1) The media looks at the entire spectrum of people and ALWAYS picks the extremists. No one listens to the guy that says "I think China is going to become an economic world power." Instead they listen to the people that say "CHINA IS GOING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!"

      2) If by some chance you did hear one of the reasonable people rather than the extremists. You don't remember it, because of course it wa

    • by King_TJ ( 85913 )

      Exactly! Plus, you can go back even further and find things like an article I found from the Washington Post, back in 1923 where they were concerned about the polar ice caps melting and sea life dying off from it.

      Umm.... sounds exactly like the stuff they've been predicting real recently and pushing as a "sky is falling" scenario playing out in the next few years if we don't make drastic changes!

      As a guy getting close to age 50, I've seen so much environmental nonsense -- it's REALLY difficult to accept an

    • by Uecker ( 1842596 )

      Do you have a quote for Al Gore saying that Florida is underwater in 10 years?

      In any case, wouldn't this be a straw man argument? You are not discussing the real issue, but arguing with something someone said in the past. How is this relevant?

    • https://genius.com/Harry-chapi... [genius.com]

      Overselling things is bad, but the ethos behind "let's stop the greenhouse effect" and "let's reduce deaths and illness from air and water pollution" and "let's shape culture to use less and be more sustainable" and "drought, fire and flooding are DEFINITELY getting worse" is pretty valuable.

      I'm really interested in how /. became a haven for climate change deniers, which you are. I am calling your last sentence a lie. Deniers have been shifting the goalposts as evidence of h

  • On the plus side, it will be bikini season in Moscow.
    • You can already have a bikini season in Moscow every Summer, it's not like the city is buried under snow round the year.
      And in Winter as well: there are people (including ladies) who bathe in a hole in the ice.

  • Any serious report on the capability of the US Military doesn't just assume it exists in a vacuum.
    Any of these far-fetched scenarios - while not impossible, are vanishingly unlikely: you might as well train for asteroid-impact missions - neglects to ALSO note that no matter what the negative outcomes for the US military, the outcomes are immeasurably worse for EVERY OTHER FIGHTING FORCE ON EARTH.

    It remains by far the most flexible, adaptable, well-equipped, effective fighting force.

  • Since this seems to be all about scare tactics, the good news is that if the United States military is crippled due to Global Warming, then certainly so will all other militaries around the entire world. And considering that it's the largest in the world, the United States military will be the last one standing. So if you were worried about the United States being defenseless, it's nothing to worry about.
  • Yes. It'll get so bad the most advanced military will collapse, leaving the world free for pillaging by less advanced countries that, ummm, won't.

  • This is horseshit (Score:5, Informative)

    by Miamicanes ( 730264 ) on Friday October 25, 2019 @12:53AM (#59345228)

    Anyone who thinks the US and its military is genuinely in danger of collapse due to climate change would do well to reflect upon the "Great horse manure crisis of 1894" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    TL/DR: In 1894, urban planners predicted that the streets of New York and London (and most other big cities) would be perpetually buried under several feet of horse poop by the 1950s as population grown caused an unsustainable increase in the number of urban horses that would eventually outstrip our ability to remove their daily fecal droppings from city streets.

    It's relevant, because back in the 1890s, the sense of crisis was palpable and real. You literally COULDN'T cross the street in New York or London without wading through ankle-deep horseshit... and even smaller big cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Toronto, Madrid, Milan, Prague, and Stockholm were starting to have serious poop problems of their own. Then, almost overnight, cars happened, and horse-drawn carriages became little more than romantic Friday-night rides around a park.

    A generation ago, military planners could make scary assertions like, "The US might become the victim of a fuel embargo driven by climate change" and be taken seriously, because back then, the US was dependent upon imported foreign oil. Now, thanks to shale, the US is a net EXPORTER of petroleum. Gas will probably never sustainably fall BELOW $2/gallon going forward (because shale costs more to produce than Saudi crude did back at its peak)... but gas is unlikely to sustainably rise ABOVE $3/gallon, either, because shale production is now ramped up to the point where we can produce nearly unlimited quantities (from the perspective of daily US oil demand) of it in perpetuity going forward.

    Ditto, for fresh water. Desalination isn't cheap. In fact, desalinated water costs about 2-3 times as much per gallon as freshwater from lakes and wells. But once a metro area rides over that speed bump & accepts higher water prices as the price of abolishing shortages, we can make as much fresh water as anyone wants to buy at that price. As a matter of good luck, the areas at the greatest risk of needing to rely upon desalination for freshwater are ALSO generally the areas with the most expensive cost of living to begin with. The fact is, someone who's ALREADY paying $2,500/month rent or carrying the mortgage on a million-dollar house isn't likely to care whether the monthly water bill is $25 or $70, because it's literally piss in the ocean compared to every OTHER expense they're getting hit up for month after month... and would almost certainly PREFER to pay $70 for abundant water than pay $25 and live with rationing.

  • Quote: "...the possibility that domestic power, water, and food systems might collapse..." Maybe you shouldn't have privatized those core facilities in the first place? Here in NL those services were rock solid until we privatized them, and now all kinds of problems crop up like unable to meet demand, tell blackouts to happen often instead of fixing the problem etc.
  • First they conclude that the world is going to hell because of the excessive release of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere. Then they recommend reacting to that by burning more hydrocarbons:

    The report recommends the U.S. military should take advantage of the Arctic's hydrocarbon resources and new transit routes to repel Russian encroachment.

    So basically: Aaaaa, panic!! The house is on fire!!! Put the fire out by STARTING MORE FIRES!!!!

  • by Paul Fernhout ( 109597 ) on Friday October 25, 2019 @09:36AM (#59346182) Homepage

    ... in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.

    As I wrote in this essay:
    https://pdfernhout.net/recogni... [pdfernhout.net]
    "Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?
    Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land?
    Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere?
    These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not so deadly serious. ...
    Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ...
    There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ..."

    Anyway, the deeper issue here is not that "climate change" puts us at risk (even as it might). The lack of insight into the deeper issue leads to failure to prioritize creating resilient infrastructure. Especially challenging for current US politics is that encouraging individuals and communities to have greater self-reliance and greater capacity for productivity (within a federated networked context) is fundamentally at odds with centralizing most wealth in a few hands.

    That is why books like Brittle Power from 1982 have essentially been ignored:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    "Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that the U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, whether by accident or malice, often even more so than US technology is vulnerable to disruption of the imported oil supply. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, and is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy. In the preface to the 2001 edition, L

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