Climate Change Threatens Our National Security
Florida Veterans for Common Sense believes in a strong national defense to protect the life, liberty, equality, and human rights of all Americans. Climate change threatens our national security in ever-increasing ways, in addition to threatening our economy and the health of human beings throughout the world. Coastal military installations are threatened by flooding, terrorist threats are being multiplied by unwanted migration of people who can no longer live on their land, and extreme weather events create more challenging operational environments and divert limited personnel and resources to manage emergency responses.
There are two main ways to deal with climate change. The first is adaptation, managing what we cannot avoid. This approach concerns protecting existing infrastructure, homes, and people from rising seas, fires, stronger weather and other changes that are happening and will continue to happen until the threat is stopped. The second is mitigation, avoiding what we cannot manage. That means finding ways to stop climate change before it reaches the point of no return. Mitigation must happen because adaptation alone is costly, and it is eventually only temporary. Since human use of combustion energy, with its release of heat-trapping gases, is a principal cause of climate change, mitigation can happen on many levels. Individuals should maintain what they have and replace what they can with the most energy-efficient products they can find. Organizations should do that plus pool financial resources for larger energy-efficient projects. Governments at all levels should incentivize the change to more energy-efficient ways of living.
Local governments should improve building codes and growth planning rules to promote better energy use. They should encourage natural landscaping and local farming, and they should divest from fossil fuels. State governments should encourage the use of solar and other non-combustion forms of energy and discourage all exploration for and production of fossil fuels. The federal government’s best kind of mitigation is to pass comprehensive legislation that puts a fee on fossil fuels to discourage their use and gives the monies collected to consumers, who then stimulate the economy.
Florida Veterans for Common Sense believes that elected officials and the public should understand the threats posed by climate change, and work towards effective solutions to these threats.