PENTAGON WARNED OF ECO DISASTER
Climate change is a greater risk than terrorism and may lead to a global catastrophe costing millions of lives, according to reports of a secret Pentagon study.
Britain’s Observer newspaper said the report was ordered by an influential US Pentagon adviser but was covered up by "US defence chiefs" for four months, until the paper "obtained" it.
The leak promises to draw angry attention to US environmental and military policies, following Washington's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
President George W Bush, who has close links to the fossil fuels industry in the US, has long been sceptical about global warning and his stance has stunned scientists worldwide.
The Observer reports the Pentagon study, commissioned by Andrew Marshall, predicts that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies”.
The Pentagon report is quoted as saying: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.... Once again, warfare would define human life."
Its authors - Peter Schwartz, a CIA consultant and a former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Dough Randall of Global Business Network based in California - said climate change should be considered "immediately" as a top political and military issue.
It "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern", they were quoted as saying.
Experts familiar with the report told the newspaper the threat to global stability "vastly eclipses that of terrorism".
Some examples given of probable scenarios in the report include:
- Britain will have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020
- Violent storms will make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable as early as 2007
- Storms will also lead to a breach in the aqueduct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California
- "Catastrophic" shortages of potable water and energy will lead to widespread war by 2020.
Coming from the Pentagon, normally a bastion of conservative politics and focused on military and political strategy, the report is expected to bring environmental issues to the fore in the US presidential race.
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