Intelligence Agencies Warn of Climate Risks in Worldwide Threat Assessment

In their annual summary of global threats, the nation's intelligence agencies warned on Tuesday that climate change and other environmental trends "are likely to fuel economic and social discontent—and possibly upheaval—through 2018.”

Intelligence officials testified before a Senate committee about global threats.
 Left to right: FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, National
Intelligence Director Dan Coats, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Robert
Ashley, National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers and National
  Geospatial Intelligence Agency Director Robert Cardillo.

While there may not be indications of an abrupt and cataclysmic event on the immediate horizon, the trends are already visible, they said in a statement presented to the Senate Intelligence Committee at a hearing where the Trump administration's top intelligence officials testified.

The statement was matter-of-fact and brief, but unambiguous. Normally, conclusions like these might not deserve much notice. But in an administration where top officials, including some with intelligence responsibilities, have repeatedly questioned the basic science of global warming, such a frank confirmation of the mainstream consensus was striking.

Read the Inside Climate News story - “Intelligence Agencies Warn of Climate Risks in Worldwide Threat Assessment.”

Trump drops climate change from US national security strategy

The Trump administration has dropped climate change from a list of global threats in a new national security strategy the president unveiled on Monday. 

Donald Trump has dropped climate change from America’s national security strategy. 

Instead, Trump’s NSS paper emphasised the need for the US to regain its economic competitiveness in the world.

That stance represents a sharp change from the Obama administration’s NSS, which placed climate change as one of the main dangers facing the nation and made building international consensus on containing global warming a national security priority.

White House officials said on Sunday that the Trump NSS was the culmination of 11 months of collaboration between all the leading security, foreign policy and economic agencies of government. 

The exclusion of climate change as a national security threat appears, however, to conflict with views previously expressed by the defense secretary, James Mattis.

Read Julian Borger’s story on The Guardian - “Trump drops climate change from US national security strategy.”