US House of Representatives votes to deny climate science

While people all over the world are waking up to the realities of climate change, and as the US is more frequently experiencing extreme weather events, the US House of Representatives has gone out on a limb.

Ryan Koronowski

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SEA-LEVEL rise impacting naval bases. Climate change altering natural disaster response. Drought influenced by climate change in the Middle East and Africa leading to conflicts over food and water - as in, for instance, Syria.

The military understands the realities of climate change and the negative impacts of heavy dependence on fossil fuels.

The US House of Representatives does not.

With a mostly party-line vote on 22 May, the House passed an amendment sponsored by Representative David McKinley (R-WV) that seeks to prevent the Department of Defence from using funding to address the national security impacts of climate change.

'You can't change facts by ignoring them,' said Mike Breen, Executive Director of the Truman National Security Project, and leader of the clean energy campaign, Operation Free. 'This is like trying to lose 20 pounds by smashing your bathroom scale.'

The full text of McKinley's amendment reads: 'None of the funds authorised to be appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to implement the US Global Change Research Programme National Climate Assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report, the United Nations Agenda 21 sustainable development plan, or the May 2013 Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis Under Executive Order.'

In other words, the House just tried to write climate denial into the Defence Department's budget. 'The McKinley amendment would require the Defence Department to assume that the cost of carbon pollution is zero,' Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Bobby Rush (D-IL) said in a letter to their colleagues before the vote. 'That's science denial at its worst and it fails our moral obligation to our children and grandchildren.'

The amendment forces the Defence Department to ignore the findings and recommendations of the National Climate Assessment and the IPCC's latest climate assessment, specifically with regard to the national security impacts of climate change. It would also do the same for the Social Cost of Carbon, which provides a framework for rulemakers to take into account the societal, security and economic costs associated with emitting more carbon dioxide.

If the Pentagon cannot use its funding to implement the recommendations from the NCA and the IPCC reports, the specific impacts on the Defence Department would be vague - and troublesome - because the reports are crystal clear.

With the release of the National Climate Assessment earlier in May, 300 leading climate scientists and experts told Americans in no uncertain terms that time is running out to confront the dangerous impacts of climate change.

In the week of 19 May, 16 military experts agreed, telling Americans in a report that climate change is already threatening national security and the economy. The CNA Corporation Military Advisory Board authored the report, titled 'National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change'. The experts who authored the report have well over 500 years of combined military experience (580, according to a tally by the Climate Progress website). This isn't idle talk.

The steps the Department of Defence has been taking to cut its reliance on carbon-heavy fuels, however, are not just to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Vice Admiral Lee Gunn (Ret.), and president of CNA Corporation's Institute for Public Research, said 'the American military, the single largest user of oil in the US, has recently begun transitioning to renewable and more efficient energy to improve its operational effectiveness and flexibility, with the added benefit of beginning to reduce its fossil fuel dependence and mitigate climate change.'

'Civilian and uniformed leaders of our military know it is increasingly risky to depend on a single fuel source; these leaders are diversifying the military's sources of power to make our bases more resilient and our forces more effective,' said Vice Admiral Gunn.

The Defence Department is beginning to take action. It recently started work on its largest solar project to date, and has been making progress on its 'Net Zero' energy initiative. The goal? For bases to produce as much energy as they consume, and for forward combat operations to not have to rely on oil-heavy supply lines.

The McKinley amendment was added to the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA), which later passed, 325-98. Only three Republicans (Garrett, Gibson, LoBiondo) voted against the amendment, and four Democrats (Barrow, Cuellar, McIntyre, Rahall) voted for it.

The Senate held first markup of their version of the bill on 21 May. The NDAA sets out the budget for the Department of Defence and details the expenditures it can make, though this is different than the budget that actually awards the appropriations. That will happen later this year.

The NDAA is one of the few pieces of legislation that actually work close to normal - the House passes its version, and the Senate passes its version. It remains to be seen if the Senate will take up and pass a similar amendment, but even if it does not, the final decision will come during conference. The two chambers go to conference to iron out the differences before final passage and the president's signature.

Ryan Koronowski is Co-Editor of Climate Progress on the ThinkProgress website (thinkprogress.org), from which this article is reproduced.

US faces the heat Indrajit Bose THE US is facing the heat, literally. It is infamous in the climate change negotiations circle for sticking to its longstanding position of not committing to effective action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions unless developing economies such as India and China commit to the same. It is also known to give short shrift to the principles of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which upholds the historical responsibility of the developed world to first take action on climate change because they caused the problem, and then help developing economies take mitigation action through financial and technological assistance. While its political climate vis-…-vis climate change may have remained unchanged since climate change negotiations began 20 years ago, its physical climate has surely changed, says a study carried out by scientists in the US. The study, Climate Change Impacts in the United States, is the third national climate assessment of the country, which assesses the science of climate change and its impacts across the country. The study essentially captures that the US is not left untouched by the impacts of climate change, be it in the agriculture and water sectors or when it comes to facing extreme heat and flooding. 'Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington State, and maple syrup producers in Vermont are all observing climate-related changes that are outside of recent experience. So, too, are coastal planners in Florida, water managers in the arid Southwest, city dwellers from Phoenix to New York, and Native Peoples on tribal lands from Louisiana to Alaska,' the study reads. Americans are also experiencing longer and hotter summers, and 'extended periods of unusual heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced'. Winters have become shorter and warmer and it usually pours when it rains. People living in coastal areas in particular are experiencing more street floods during storms and high tides. Inland cities, especially in the Midwest and Northeast, are also experiencing more flooding, the report states. Not just that, wildfires in the West begin earlier in the spring and last till late into the fall, burning a wider area; this, the report says, is due to hotter and drier weather and earlier snowmelt. Some communities are being forced to relocate because the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts in Arctic Alaska has receded and autumn storms cause more erosion now. The report comes at a time when greenhouse gas emissions are growing, the impacts of climate change are being increasingly felt across the world, impacting the poor of the world more so, and the world is negotiating to work out an effective deal by 2015 to avoid catastrophic climate change. When climate change negotiations began, President George HW Bush at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 had said, 'The American way of life is not up for negotiation,' and the country has followed the philosophy so far. Clearly, it's time the US went back on its words. Highlights of the report:     Temperature increase: US average temperature has increased by 1.3øF to 1.9øF since 1895. Most of the increase has occurred since 1970.     Extreme weather: Over the past 50 years, much of the US saw an increase in prolonged periods of excessively high temperatures, more heavy downpours, and in some regions, more severe droughts     Stresses: Stresses the US faces as a consequence of climate change include heat stress, respiratory stress, waterborne diseases     Infrastructure-related: Sea level rise, storm surge, heavy downpours leading to flooding, damaged infrastructure     Water stress: Surface and groundwater supplies in some regions under stress     Agriculture: Climate change expected to have more negative impacts on crops and livestock, leading to diminishing food supply security     Migration: In parts of Alaska, Louisiana, the Pacific Islands and other coastal locations, climate change impacts (through erosion and inundation) are forcing communities to relocate from historical homelands     Ecosystems: Biodiversity affected and benefits of ecosystems eroding away due to climate change     Ocean: Ocean waters becoming warmer and more acidic, affecting marine life.

*Third World Resurgence No. 285, May 2014, pp 26-27