North Star Writers Group

The largely partisan debate over global warming and climate change has become political news once again. On April 18, the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, established in January by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, met to discuss the looming threat.

During this meeting, committee members discussed the possibility of global warming becoming not just a worldwide problem but also a specific security threat to America. Republican panel member and Wisconsin Representative James Sensenbrenner called such pronouncements extremist and full of “hot air.” But it’s more than just the House Democrats discussing this second large-scale problem presented by global warming.

The congressional hearing coincided with a larger climate change discussion – the first-ever United Nations Security Council debate on the topic. Like Rep. Sensenbrenner, some members of the Security Council, including those from developing nations, felt that global warming had no place in a discussion of national or global security. British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett tried to prove that it did. She concurred that environmental changes can impact the way countries interact.

“What makes wars start?” she said. “Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall.” According to Beckett, the possible effects of global warming are not limited to adverse environmental effects, and the global population would be wise to consider “consequences people have not been thinking about.”

On the American front, Virginia-based national security think tank CNA Corporation warned this week that the diminishing natural resources caused by climate change will make the United States a target for terrorism and other international disputes. This report was written by six retired admirals and five retired generals, who I trust know what they’re talking about when it comes to national security. Additionally, the United States is unquestionably dependent on foreign sources for oil, which also makes us vulnerable.

While it is impossible to react to every possible threat that is thrown our way, we must take some lessons from 9/11, which was preceded by months of warnings that such an attack was plausible. Sometimes dismissing potential threats as fear-mongering can have disastrous consequences. Global warming and its effects aren’t exactly unsubstantiated shots-in-the-dark either. Mounds of scientific evidence point to the fact that global warming is not a liberal myth but a very real problem that could potentially affect everyone, Democrat and Republican alike.

This leads me to wonder why and how environmental conservation became a partisan issue in the first place. Those who want to protect the most vital factor of human existence – the planet on which we live – are labeled as “tree-huggers” or “environazis,” by conservatives. As far as I can tell, the only division is that environmentalists receive no personal benefit for merely caring about our planet, yet those who appose environmental legislation, including limiting emissions to help combat global warming, have money motivating them.

It’s no secret that combating global warming will cost money and will take sacrifice, but the non-monetary cost of doing nothing could be much greater. President Bush argues that until India and China take action to reduce their ecological footprint, any U.S. efforts would be moot. This is akin to a child stamping his feet and proclaiming “But so-and-so’s Mom lets him watch TV before doing his homework!” The United States should be a leader in this fight to stop global warming. Instead we are a bad example of a greedy nation too stubborn to change, even if the eventual benefits far outweigh the sacrifices.

Rep. Sensenbrenner also complained that notions of global warming as a national threat scare our children. I think that children old enough to understand climate change and its varied ramifications can handle it. Children are not immune to the ways of the world and are not as fragile as we often paint them to be. It’s hard to avoid talk and the avalanche of news stories regarding the Virginia Tech shootings, and I’m certain in the past few days there have been many parent-child discussions about safety and what such tragic events mean.

The alternative would be for children to be blissfully unaware and thus unprepared if, heaven forbid, such a tragedy would ever hit closer to home for them. It is preferable for our nation’s children, if the worst of predictions come true, to be aware of the problem rather than have it swept under the rug to wait for the day when our children are grown and won’t have a suitable planet left to inhabit.

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