John Kerry: Disband your climate denial panel, Mr. President
Source: Washington Post
John Kerry: Disband your climate denial panel, Mr. President
By John F. Kerry February 25 at 3:48 PM
John F. Kerry, a Democrat, was secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 and is a visiting distinguished statesman at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Many have become immune or anesthetized to the daily assault on truth that is the Trump presidency, an alternative reality where North Korea has denuclearized and Russia might not have attacked our elections in 2016. It would be laughable were it not dangerous. Presidents are supposed to hold consensus together, not invent fictions to fray it.
But the administration’s most dangerous collision with facts has been its effort to paralyze U.S. efforts to join the nations of the world in confronting climate change. The White House plans to convene “experts” to “determine” whether climate change is a national security threat. We know what the outcome will be: President Trump’s council of doubters and deniers will convene to undo a 26-year-old factual consensus that climate change is a national-security threat multiplier.
As we careen toward irreversible environmental tipping points, we have no time to waste debating alternative facts only to invest years more reestablishing trust in the real ones. No panel 10 years from now can put the ice sheets back together or hold back rising tides.
Begin with the kind of facts that John Adams called “stubborn things.” In 1991, President George H.W. Bush’s administration assessed in its National Security Strategy that threats such as climate change, which “respect no international boundaries,” were “already contributing to political conflict.” Each of Bush’s successors included climate change in their National Security Strategies. Even after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush’s administration made room in the 2002 National Security Strategy to warn of “dangerous human interference with the global climate.”
Were four consecutive administrations wrong? No. The factual basis of climate change’s threat originated not with politicians but with the national security community, including the intelligence community. Eleven retired military leaders constituting the military advisory board at CNA, a naval think tank in Arlington, described climate change in 2007 as “a threat multiplier for instability.” Seven years later, 16 retired flag officers representing all branches of the military implored Americans to understand the severity of “a salient national security concern” because “time and tide wait for no one.”
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-kerry-disband-your-climate-denial-panel-mr-president/2019/02/25/002f6b0e-3924-11e9-aaae-69364b2ed137_story.html