Center for a New American Security

This week’s roundup will provide to you with plenty of conversation starters for your weekend parties, with the latest news on the often-controversial topic of geoengineering – the altering of Earth’s systems to mitigate or reverse the effects of climate change.  

Today the New York Times reported on a growing trend in housing construction: the decision to use lighter-hued materials as opposed to darker, traditional counterparts such as slate and asphalt. The article focuses on the economic benefits families and businesses can enjoy if they follow Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s advice and make this switch. In many cases, using light-colored roofing materials or simply painting roofs white can increase building reflectivity, thereby cooling the structure and reducing the residential or corporate investor’s energy costs. The economic basis for the white-roof transition is fairly sound, though results vary by region and depend on other factors such as average exposure to sunlight.
 
However, when considering approaches to greenhouse gas reduction, it is important to consider just not the aspect of energy savings, but that when aggregated, seas of white-shingled roofs may actually have the potential to alter the Earth’s albedo, a measure of the planet’s overall reflectivity, and, thus, impact the climate in ways that we do not quite understand.

• U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that rich nations – including the United States, Australia, and the Netherlands – are likely to face an increasing number of water-related disasters in the coming years.
• Senator John Kerry believes that the United States and China’s progress on talks concerning climate change has been too slow.
• Two new British-built satellites designed to help monitor natural disasters have been launched.
• The European Union has sent a delegation to Turkmenistan in the hopes of forging better relations as the EU seeks to gain suppliers for the Nabucco pipeline.
• The New York Times examines the use of white roofs to help cut energy costs everywhere from Wal-Mart stores to Fort Irwin Army Base.
• The Financial Times examines public wariness about carbon capture.
• Scientific American examines how minor errors in data have been exploited by climate change skeptics.

• The United States and China have promised better cooperation on climate change, energy, and the environment without laying out specific targets in a memorandum signed yesterday.
• The New York Times’ Dot Earth Blog examines the possibilities of the Arctic as a shipping route in the future.
• The Department of Defense continues to examine its fuel and water use in an effort to reduce its logistics “tail.”
• BP believes that it will see a return from work on Iraq’s Rumaila field comparable to that of other world fields, and that the deal to develop Rumaila will be wrapped up by the end of the year.
• The Guardian examines the mass extinction event currently taking place – the “sixth great extinction event” – and its potential effects on populations living in the southern hemisphere.

• A new report shows that China’s top three polluters emit more greenhouse gases than the whole of Britain.
• The New York Times profiles the surge of investment in the battery industry, a component of the further development of photovoltaic, wind turbine, and hybrid-electric vehicle technologies.
• Stimulus plans for the federally sponsored smart energy grid have encountered fresh criticism amid concerns about the network’s vulnerability to cyberattacks.
• Legal recourse continues against Americans who have been charged with stealing $40 million in fuel from Camp Liberty, Baghdad, and selling it on the black market.
• Despite concerns last week about India’s shirking at proposed emissions targets, a top Indian climate change official has confirmed the country’s commitment to reducing fossil fuel use, simultaneously requesting developed countries’ aid with the transition.

• Secretary of State Clinton and Treasury Secretary Geithner call for a “new strategic dialogue” between the United States and China to address issues including climate change, energy, and the environment in the Wall Street Journal.
• The New York Times examines Russia’s contributions to climate change and ability to adapt to potential new climate goals.
• Two new water stations have been opened in Ninewa Province, Iraq, to provide potable water to some 150 homes in five villages.
• A new study on clouds over the Pacific Ocean shows how climate change can create feedback loops, reports Bloomberg News.
• Newly declassified satellite photos show the extent of the retreat of Arctic sea ice in the summer.
• Scientific American profiles a plan to use bacteria to halt desertification.

Big news started early in the week for the U.S. Army on Monday, when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced his plan to grow the branch by 22,000 troops to a total standing force of 569,000.  Gates’s call comes in response to prolonged strain on forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and though force structure per se doesn’t fall directly under the purview of the Natural Security Program, the announcement set the tone for the days to follow.

The New York Times also provided a look at DOD’s efforts to cut energy demand.  In the article, Alan Shaffer, DOD principal deputy director for defense research and engineering, reported that the Army’s fuel use increased more than tenfold as it transitioned to wartime operations after 2001. Thus far, the “greening” of the U.S. military has mostly been an exercise in self-imposed pragmatism—lower energy costs free up much-needed funds and fewer fuel convoys reduce some in-theater vulnerabilities.
But despite ongoing efforts to trim energy consumption, the Armed Forces Press Service reported this week that Army units in Afghanistan are still facing perilous conditions supplying forward operating bases with food and energy, especially as combat operations intensify in Helmand province. The 286th Combat Support Sustainment Battalion, for example, must increase supply volumes even as hazardous conditions persist.

• Yvo De Boer, the top climate official at the UN, has said that success at the Copenhagen summit will require a $10 billion investment by the world’s wealthiest countries.
• The American Forces Press Service examines the Panjshir Provincial Reconstruction Team’s efforts to provide food storage facilities to Afghan farmers.
• The New York Times examines the transportation and logistical difficulties associated with the development of wind power.
• Scientific American profiles Europe’s attempts to generate solar power in northern Africa.
• Violence in the Niger Delta has driven down oil production to the point that Angola has overtaken Nigeria to become Africa’s top oil producer.

The Natural Security Blog will be posting our thoughts on Sharon Burke's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee shortly. As she said in her opening statement, we all took this hearing as an encouraging sign that climate change is now being considered a serious national security issue. More to follow.

In the meantime, read her complete testimony and watch the video from yesterday's hearing online.

Last night CNAS hosted “Lost in Translation,” a dinner event that brought together key policy makers and scientists to discuss the age old question of why the two communities can’t often understand what each other are talking about. Up for discussion was the use of climate science in the policy-making process, and how to better meet the needs of both sides. More specifically, moderator Sharon Burke pushed participants to explain their personal experiences as consumers and producers of climate science.

At the forefront of the exchange was the recognition of the need for increased interparty communication. Congress, the President, scientists, and all other vested communities must talk to each other about climate change more honestly and at greater depth than ever before, one attendee remarked, with others around the table nodding vigorously in agreement. At times throughout the evening, participants contested and counter-contested their colleagues’ assertions, but a desire for greater communication among them all was unanimous. Indeed, some contended that this problem will never really be solved – scientists and policy makers will never be a perfect marriage – but that regular dialogue and a process of learning from one another will improve the situation.

“Do the world’s environmental problems threaten American national security?” wonders Geoffrey Dabelko in this autumn 1999 Wilson Quarterly piece, “The Environment Factor.” In this article, Dabelko, director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a longtime scholar on the frontline of the environmental security debate (and, full disclosure, my former boss) explores the evolution of environmental issues within the national security community.

For Dabelko, it was journalist – now CNAS senior fellow – Robert Kaplan’s Atlantic Monthly article, “The Coming Anarchy,” which explored the nexus of environmental challenges and state failure in West Africa, that jumpstarted the debate in Washington in the 1990s. Kaplan’s article praised scholar Thomas Homer-Dixon’s work on the complexity of resource scarcity and the potential for civil strife and violence, and “sketched a dark view of the global future.” As Dabelko writes, “The environment will be the national security issue of the 21st century, Kaplan declared, and Homer-Dixon held the keys to understanding it.”

While not even vaguely as exciting as reports of flesh-eating military robots (which, either fortunately or unfortunately depending on one’s point of view, turned out to actually just be vegetable biomass-powered machines), this week did feature a number of consequential moves in the realm of energy security both domestically and internationally.

In the Washington Post, retiring Alaska Governor Sarah Palin came out swinging against the Waxman-Markey bill currently in committee in the Senate, arguing that any form of cap-and-trade system would be catastrophic to the U.S. economy. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry fired back at Governor Palin in the Huffington Post, stating that Governor Palin’s assertion that America’s energy woes can be solved by exploiting domestic oil, natural gas, and coal reserves completely ignores the issue of climate change, which could be catastrophic not only to the economy but across the board. In other domestic news, supermajor Exxon Mobil seems to believe that the Obama administration is serious in its professed desire to push forward the development of biofuels, as it announced a $600 million investment in algae-based biofuels this week, despite CEO Rex Tillerson’s well-documented skepticism on the subject.