BOSTON, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- Viewing climate change as a national security threat promotes too much reliance on the military to deal with global warming, critics say.
Pentagon planners are incorporating the possible consequences of climate change into security risk scenarios, such as the creation of millions of new refugees or the coming of conflicts over dwindling resources. But others contend "securitizing" global warming runs the risk of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, The Boston Globe reported Saturday.
"Once you try to securitize the problem, you also securitize the solution," Adil Najam, director of the Boston University's Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, told the newspaper. "The solution to those problems is not in the Pentagon. It is moms and pops driving (sport utility vehicles0."
They also reportedly say putting a military planning emphasis on global warming may make it easier to classify future disputes that have complex economic, religious, or political roots as "climate conflicts," glossing over their underlying causes.
"The habit of defining any instance of political instability anywhere as a national security problem for the United States is a form of 'threat inflation' that leads to bad foreign policy decisions," political blogger Matthew Yglesias told the Globe.
