Remember Who Doesn’t Believe Global Warming Is A Security Threat

To add to Suemedha’s excellent post about the intelligence community’s view of the security implications of global warming, it’s worth remembering how hostile the GOP was to the very idea. See, for instance, this Byron York piece for National Review Online from last year:

Republicans disagree. Their objection is not a denial of global warming, nor even an argument that some claims made about climate change, most notably by former Vice President Al Gore, are exaggerated. Rather, the GOP objection is that many other agencies inside the U.S. government are studying climate change, and there is no pressing need for the CIA to join in. “Why would it be in an intelligence bill?” asked committee ranking Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra in an appearance on C-SPAN Wednesday morning. “What added value does the intelligence community add to this debate?”

The question is particularly acute, Republicans say, because the intelligence agencies are already stretched by the war on terror. Citing Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, Hoekstra added, “Do we really want to start diverting resources from those threats to global warming?”

Which is pretty cynical, considering the intel budget is like $50 billion annually and it costs extremely little to fund and resource a long-term-outlook think piece about global warming. But more importantly, something you always hear from the intelligence community is that no one cares about long-term analysis. Everyone in the policy arena is dealing (or not dealing) with the crisis of the moment, and so long-term analysis goes by the wayside until the next crisis materializes. And then the Hoekstras of the world call in CIA officials for hearings and express disappointment about their failures of vision and foresight and blahblahblah. Much easier to take massive contributions from industries that pay to fund flat-earth studies that deny or denigrate global warming in order to protect their profits.