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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • Guest Contributor

    Budgeting for Climate

    August 12, 2009 By Will Rogers

    Update: Read a response by Miriam Pemberton

    “The Obama administration…has identified the task of substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions as one of its top priorities,” writes Miriam Pemberton in a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, “Military vs. Climate Security: Mapping the Shift from the Bush Years to the Obama Era.”

    According to Pemberton’s analysis, the Obama administration has significantly bolstered spending related to climate security, shrinking the gap between military and climate security spending from 88:1 under the Bush administration’s FY2008 budget to 65:1 under Obama’s FY 2010 budget.

    According to Pemberton, the gap is even smaller—9:1—if one includes the appropriations in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. However, this one-time boost is fleeting. While much of the Recovery Act “provides funding for long-term projects, such as high-speed rail systems, [funding] will need to be sustained if emissions reduction targets are to be met,” Pemberton argues.

    At face value, “Military vs. Climate Security” is an important assessment that illustrates how seriously the Obama administration is taking the threat of global climate change. But with that said, several words of caution are in order.

    First, the author seems to oversimplify military spending, and the report could be read as inferring that the Department of Defense (DoD) has an unnecessarily oversized budget. Regardless of one’s general opinion of military spending levels, the United States is still engaged in two wars that require high levels of funding to ensure that our armed forces have the equipment to operate efficiently, safely and successfully – and the means necessary for a safe drawdown in Iraq. And while military spending has increased between FY2009 and FY2010, the White House has made significant inroads with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees “to terminate or reduce programs that have troubled histories or that failed to demonstrate adequate performance when compared to other programs and activities needed to carry out U.S. national security objectives,” such as cutting new orders for the F-22 program.

    Second, Pemberton may be overstating the gap between military and climate change spending, as her premise would require a more rigorous assessment than is apparent in this report. According to her calculations in Appendix C, DoD is spending only $31.12 million on climate change-related programs and activities: $14.3 million on programs related to research, development, testing, and evaluation by the Army; and $16.82 million on similar programs by the Navy. But these figures do not come near to quantifying DoD’s full efforts.

    Take, for example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is spending approximately $100 million of its $3 billion annual budget on projects related to alternative energy (and this does not even include its classified energy projects).

    It is also unclear how personnel have been quantified. According to Christine Parthemore of the Center for a New American Security, today there are far more people at DoD who are looking seriously at climate change, equating to a considerable expense of man- hours. The 2008 Defense Authorization Act, for example, requires DoD to assess the impacts of climate change on its facilities, capabilities, and missions, and to incorporate its concerns into its major strategic documents, including the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, which is now underway.

    “Does this assessment count all alternative energy efforts as working toward climate security?” wonders Parthemore. The U.S. Air Force is expanding its energy office, which is working to increase energy efficiency – funding a “new generation of energy-efficient unmanned aircraft,” for example – and developing lower-carbon aviation fuels.

    While Pemberton notes the important strides the U.S. Air Force is making to reduce its emissions, it is unclear whether the Army and Navy’s alternative energy work is being counted towards the total. What about partnerships with private industries, such as the planned 500 MW solar thermal plant in California, which is estimated to cost approximately $1.5 billion (the bulk of which might come from an industry partner)?

    In addition, the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act includes a $5 million line item for a new Director of Operational Energy, Plans and Programs that will help sculpt DoD’s energy acquisitions and logistics strategy–and ostensibly contribute to climate security.

    Third, Pemberton concentrates on mitigation and mostly excludes adaptation into her assessment. Yet DoD is focusing a lot of time and money on adaptation, which is a critical component of addressing climate change.

    Finally, Pemberton makes a fundamental conceptual error by separating climate security from “other” security. Convincing the traditional security community that threats from climate change are as important as traditional security threats is a difficult but necessary task; that security exists beyond the Department of Defense, to include long-term challenges in the strategic and operating environments, such as climate change, demographics and other natural security issues. By contrasting spending on climate security against military security, Pemberton makes climate change more like a domestic policy issue and less like a legitimate national security concern.

    That the Obama administration is making significant strides in bolstering climate change-related spending is a positive development. However, by not accounting for the full range of DoD efforts that contribute to climate security, this report falls short. A more rigorous analysis of DoD’s budget would provide a better tally of the department’s work to mitigate and adapt to climate change. A better assessment of the Obama administration’s investment in addressing global climate change would combine both military and climate security spending.

    Will Rogers is a research assistant with the Natural Security program at the Center for a New American Security, a non-partisan, national security think tank in Washington, D.C. Before that, he was an intern with the Environmental Change and Security Program.

    Topics: climate change, conflict, Guest Contributor, military, security
    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/12058012007847590441 Christena

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    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/08186033047213683502 Michael Renner

      It's good to see Will Rogers point to additional climate-relevant items in the military budget. This underlines the fact that such items are scattered all over the federal budget, and a complete tally is thus naturally difficult.

      But I'm not sure that I necessarily would want to see large climate spending under the aegis of DoD. Climate change is a global challenge that requires global cooperation, and transparency. And that means that civilian institutions take the lead, not those with an adversarial outlook on the world.

      The climate problematique, in my view, is yet another reason why we should seek far-reaching demilitarization. Will Rogers admonishes Miiram Pemberton that "the United States is still engaged in two wars that require high levels of funding to ensure that our armed forces have the equipment to operate efficiently, safely and successfully…" But let's not forget that the Iraq war was a war of choice started with a volley of lies; the promised withdrawal of troops may cost money, but not on the level of spending that we have seen during the last six years.

      Then there's Afghanistan. It is becoming quite clear that whatever original justification there once was is wearing thin. Obama's escalation (the war is "fundamental to the defense of our people" ??) is a fateful choice — one that I wager he will come to regret as the manifold problems that Afghanistan faces cannot be resolved with the current military strategy and the resources devoted to it.

      The United States needs a policy that de-emphasizes the military as a tool to cope with the challenges in front of us. I regard a substantial shift in resources from the military to civilian programs (climate and other) as essential.

      Michael Renner, Senior Researcher, Worldwatch Institute

    • Anonymous

      Will Rogers is correct when he says a more in-depth analysis of the DoD budget is necessary to receive a foothold. With this I mean that to start to understand how much of the budget is necessary to focus on the climate change needs to start with what DoD is spending to combat climate change.

      With this foothold the president's administration will be able to transfer some of the DoD's budget to programs that civilian institutions can take and allow DoD to focus more on the traditional security threats and to the present.

      Pemberton is accused of oversimplifying the military spending which I cannot see. Looking through the report she believes that closing the gap will balance our traditional conflicts and new conflicts which can occur from climate change such as resource scarcity. She also makes a good point about switching a certain number of jobs that DoD uses to focus on climate change to the civilian side of the house which should provide more jobs which could help with the unemployment problem we now face in the United States.

      In the end Rogers is right to question the report produced by Pemberton and is corrected in saying that an more depth analysis of the DoD budget is necessary, Pemberton provided enough evidence to prove that some of the budget could be moved in order to shorten the gap and allow the civilian institutions to take over which can create more jobs.

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/12871749575352820527 ECSP Staff

      For Miriam Pemberton's response to Will Roger's critique, please see https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2009/08/guest-contributor-miriam-pemberton.html

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