Dulce et decorum.

Sara Robinson’s sobering Alternet piece:
“Is the U.S. on the Brink of Fascism?”
http://www.alternet.org/politics/141819/is_the_u.s._on_the_brink_of_fascism/

If we don’t work for it they will scorch the earth

(ChattahBox)—According to the New York Times, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies are finally confronting the weighty challenges ahead and the threat to U.S. national security, presented by the deadly effects of the global warming of our planet from greenhouse gas emissions.
New reports sound the alarm on the impact global warming would have, on already strained military resources, in dealing with massive flooding, surging seas, drought, deadly storms, food shortages and worldwide political unrest, as the effects of increasing global warming take its toll on the environment.
This is the first time the military and intelligence agencies have considered global warming as part of national security and budget planning. Congress under the direction of Hillary Rodham Clinton and John W. Warner, when both were senators, persuaded the Department of Defense to include the effects of global warming in its 2008 budget authorizations.
The Department of Defense is using scientific data and climate research programs run by, the Navy, Air Force, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to prepare its threat assessments on global warming. The National Intelligence Council issued its threat assessment of global warming last year, forecasting dire geopolitical problems that would prompt a military and humanitarian response from U.S. forces
The Pentagon plans to include a climate change assessment in its upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review and the issues will be addressed in the State Department’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.
Intelligence studies have focused on the regions of sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, as particularly vulnerable to the effects of global warming. Droughts and food shortages from global warming have the potential to cause severe political unrest in shaky democracies around the world and spur on terrorist activities.
The present political conflict in Sudan is viewed as global warming related, caused by the severe drought in Darfur and the expanding desert to the North. And the scenario in Sudan could be repeated in other vulnerable regions in the years ahead, if global warming is left unabated.
Unless green house gasses are reduced to combat the acceleration of global warming, our future environment looks grim with the prospect of worldwide hunger, drought, flooding and political unrest. A recent government report shows that glaciers are melting and receding at an alarming rate.
Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired Marine and the former head of the Central Command, recently co-authored a report prepared by a military advisory board saying, “We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives.”

The Department of Defense is using scientific data and climate research programs run by, the Navy, Air Force, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to prepare its threat assessments on global warming. I would like to read that assessment in unedited form but that’s right it is a threat to U.S. national security so we can’t share the information. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us and we are in deep do do just thought I would share.

.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The president’s science adviser said Wednesday he recommended some changes in global warming testimony by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but denied he wanted entire pages cut.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told John Marburger, head of the president’s Office of Science and Technology, that the White House had blamed him for deleting all or part of eight pages of the 14-page draft. Boxer heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which heard from CDC chief Julie Gerberding on Oct. 24.

“We were one of a number of commentators on the testimony and we did recommended changes,” Marburger said when pressed by Boxer at a hearing. “We did not recommend wiping out eight pages of it.”

After Gerberding’s appearance last month, The Associated Press obtained a copy of her original draft testimony. It showed that at least six pages, focusing on specific health impacts in detail, had been removed during a review by the White House’s budget office.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said afterward that Marburger and his staff had raised concerns the testimony was out of line with a report by the U.N. panel of scientists studying global warming.

“Did you redact those pages,” Boxer asked Marburger during a hearing Wednesday on global warming by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Marburger said he had not.

Boxer, citing Perino’s comments, told Marburger that he, nevertheless, was being blamed.

“My office participated in a process that is run by the Office of Management and Budget,” Marburger said.

He noted that at the time, “because of a sharp media reaction” to the changes made in Gerberding’s testimony, he had issued a statement outlining some changes he had recommended.

“Those were small edits. Those could have been changed with one or two words,” Boxer said. “Someone redacted six pages.”

At the hearing Wednesday, Marburger acknowledged the seriousness of risks of the global warming. “I believe there is an urgency to begin to solve this problem,” he said.
Boxer’s committee has scheduled a vote in the first week of December on a bill that, for the first time, would establish limits on heat-trapping greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere. The full Senate is expected to take up the legislation next year; prospects of passing Congress are uncertain.

President Bush has said that global warming needs to be addressed. He opposes mandatory limits on greenhouse gases, saying that voluntary measures and development of new technologies can lead to a reduction in carbon dioxide, a product of burning fossil fuels, and other greenhouse emissions.