A recent report on climate change from the US military – commissioned by General Mark Milley- argued that the impact of climate change could, within the next three decades,

• – overwhelm the US energy grid,
• – lead to a spread of epidemic diseases, water shortages and crises in food production,
• – with a third of the world living in “water stressed” regions within ten years, lead to societal collapse in more vulnerable countries – such as Bangladesh overwhelmed by sea level rises –
• – all of which would require military interventions that would be too great for them to cope with – posing the very serious possibility that the military itself could collapse under the strain.

What is mind boggling about this report is that it takes climate breakdown as a given – something to be responded to, not stopped.

This is particularly stark in the section on the melting of Arctic sea ice. The imperative here is for the US military to be prepared to project US power into the area so it can fight off competitors and help itself to the fossil fuel reserves uncovered as the ice melts. That burning these resources leads directly to the societal collapse outlined in the rest of the report does not seem to have occurred to the authors.

This Report was published while Trump was still President, but the figures above are those projected by Biden and shows they are putting the Cold War above climate breakdown. The scale of the expenditure should reflect the scale of the threat. You can’t deploy the Marines against rising sea levels or nuke a spreading desert.