Forty-seven years ago, on this day, October 1st, 1977, the first or at least ONE of the first, reports that frames climate as a national security threat is published.
Redefining National Security. Worldwatch Paper 14. OCTOBER 1977
Brown, Lester R.
This paper, an adaption from the author’s forthcoming book “The Twenty-Ninth Day: Accommodating Human Needs and Numbers to the Earth’s Resources,” deals with non-military threats to national security. Since World War II the concept of national security has acquired an overwhelmingly military character. The policy of continual preparedness has led to the militarization of the world economy, with military expenditures now accounting for six percent of the global product. Most countries spend more on national security than they do on educating their youth. The overwhelmingly military approach to national security is based on the assumption that the principal threat to security comes from other nations. But the threats to security may now arise less from the relationship of nation to nation and more from the relationship of man to nature. Dwindling reserves of oil and the deterioration of the earth’s biological systems now threaten the security of nations everywhere.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 334ppm. As of 2024 it is 4xxppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone was beginning to say, CO2 building up is going to do things to agriculture, and so forth. What are the national security implications? We’d already had Kissinger talking to the UN General Assembly in 1974. So when a new upstart think tank called World Watch wants an angle to catch the attention of Washington DC insiders, then national security implications is not a bad bet.
What we learn is that the idea of climate hawks framing the issues in ways that are going to catch the attention and get past the “greenie hoax” shields of so-called important people has been around a lot longer than its proponents might want to give it credit for. And it has persistently not worked.
What happened next? World Watch kept watching the world as the world kept falling apart on its Watch. Watch watch? Such watch? as the famous as the comedy scene in Casablanca.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
October 1, 1957 – US Oil company ponders carbon dioxide build-up…
October 1, 1997 – Global greens gather in Melbourne, diss Australian #climate policy