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October 25, 2019 12:02 am

US Military Could Collapse Within 20 Years Due To Climate Change, Report Commissioned By Pentagon Says

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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