Climate Change and the Military: Examining the Pentagon’s Integration of National Security Interests and Environmental Goals under Clinton [Part 13]
Continued from Part 12. These are the notes used for parts 1-10. So, it may be a bit long. Editor's Note: I removed this text from the original post after agreeing that it deviated too much from the point in this piece. But, in order to be totally transparent, I'm publishing that text, for the first time, here.
In August 2009, in the first year of the Obama administration, Todd Stern, the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, argued that the “national security threat” posed by climate change could be an argument for the American Clean Energy and Security Act, otherwise known as the Waxman-Markey Bill. The law proposed a system known as cap and trade in which the U.S. government could cap the amount of greenhouse gas emissions the U.S. could emit and then allow companies to trade and buy permits to emit these gases.
This post is reprinted from the National Security Archive website and my History Hermann WordPress blog. Archived here.
Stern’s email to Jacob J. Sullivan, Huma Abedin, and Cheryl D. Mills, all advisors to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, also pointed to the role of the Pentagon in combating climate change and said this interconnected with U.S. national security policy. [Document 18] Mills later forwarded this email to Secretary Clinton to inform her of Stern’s strategy. Although the Waxman-Markey Bill narrowly passed the House of Representatives, it never came before the Senate for a vote or discussion. [1] Even so, the email shows the continued importance of the Pentagon’s actions to environmental policymakers, even though Pentagon representatives stopped appearing at climate conferences as part of the U.S. delegation in 2002.
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Document 18
Email Message, United States Special Envoy for Climate Change, Todd Stern to Jacob J. Sullivan, Huma Abedin, and Cheryl D. Mills, Excised Copy, Forward Copy, Subject: Broder Cover Story in Sunday NYT [Classification Unknown]
Date: 2009-08-10
Source: Department of State FOIA
Description: Todd Stern, the new U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, recommends to Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton’s advisers that the Obama administration use the “national security threat” posed by global climate change as argument for passage of proposed environmental legislation. This email message notes the role of the Pentagon in fighting climate change and how that is intertwined with national security policy. Cheryl D. Mills later forwards the message to Secretary Clinton.
Notes
[1] See “Was Waxman-Markey A Waste of Energy?,” by Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones; “Why the Climate Bill Died,” by Bryan Welsh, Time.
