Perspective: Climate change a major military issue

Sweltering flight deck crews couldn’t launch Navy jets for extended periods of time. U.S. ground troops would find themselves splitting time between humanitarian relief operations and fighting insurgents bent on winning over desperate third-world peoples. Low-lying logistics hub Diego Garcia would be swallowed up by the Indian Ocean.

Global warming isn’t often thought of as a matter of interest for the U.S. military. But it should be, an advisory board of 11 retired flag officers concluded in a report issued Monday under the auspices of the Center for Naval Analyses, a non-profit national security analysis group. Climate change is happening, the blue-ribbon panel concluded, and is a “serious national security threat.”

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