Retired Military Leaders Working to Create Common Ground on Energy

In recent weeks, retired military leaders have been stumping for a renewable energy policy on the grounds of national security.

Case in point, U.S. Navy Vice Admiral (Ret.) Dennis McGinn, a member of the military advisory board of the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA) is on a listening tour with former Republican Senator from Virginia John Warner to talk about energy dependence and national security.

Their arsenal for trying to convince members of Congress and the public that climate change and energy dependence are urgent national security issues includes decades of experience, a 2 1/2 year old CNA report, “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change”, and a report from May of this year which McGinn co-authored, “Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security”.

McGinn was in Los Angeles this week addressing the city’s Environmental Affairs Commission on the issue of America’s energy posture and national security. The point he wants to drive home is that climate change, energy dependence and national security are a related set of global challenges. Furthermore, energy security and climate change goals should be clearly integrated into national security and military planning processes as well as national policy.

Concerning climate change, the CNA has taken the position that Retired General Gordon Sullivan takes on war:

“We never have 100% certainty. If you wait until you have 100% certainty, something bad is going to happen on the battlefield. That’s something we know.”

McGinn has testified before the U.S. Senate about the need for U.S. leadership on climate and energy when international leaders meet at Copenhagen in December. “Setting an example is important,” he told the audience in Los Angeles. “If we don’t walk the walk by coming to the table with domestic policies, we don’t have moral authority.”

CNA’s concerns regarding climate change and national security have been well documented, although there is renewed interest recently from news outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post which Admiral McGinn attributes to the recent passage in the House of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) bill and the upcoming debate on climate legislation in the Senate.

CNA appears to be making a deliberate attempt to put the national security concerns surrounding energy and climate change in the forefront. A dozen retired admirals and generals have speaking out to Congress and the media about the need for action.

McGinn believes that focusing on the national security issues surrounding the effects of climate change – instability, mass migration, conflict over resources, poverty leading to increased fanaticism and terrorism, climate change as a threat multiplier – is a means of finding common ground on climate action among disparate and sometimes warring parties.

“The military voice, as evidenced by these two reports, can have a positive effect in trying to take partisanship out of the conversation,” McGinn told the audience when I asked if the military has a role to play in the climate policy debate.

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