Jan 19, 2011
Stories from Medill’s National Security reporting project, Global Warning, are running in the Washington Post while the McClatchy Newspapers chain is distributing them.
Ten students reporting for the project examined climate change as a national security threat and investigated the degree to which the U.S. and other countries are unprepared to cope with the drought, disease, political instability and other impacts of climate change.
The U.S. government lacks critical information about where and when climate changes will happen and what effect they will have on the U.S. military, intelligence and national security communities.
Learn the facts, take the quiz, navigate the impacts – and see what all the buzz is about at
http://global-warning.org.
”Reporting from the Arctic Circle, Bangladesh, Peru, Washington D.C. and elsewhere, the Medill students deliver a well-reported and well-told examination of an issue that, while largely neglected by the government and the media, is fast becoming one of the most serious national security concerns,” said Josh Meyer, who teaches in Medill’s Washington Program.
Meyer and Medill’s Washington bureau chief Ellen Shearer led the team of 10 graduate students who reported the investigative stories in national security project.
Among the project’s findings:
• The U.S. government lacks critical information about where and when climate changes will happen and what effect they will have on the U.S. military, intelligence and national security communities.
• In a major strategy review last year, the Pentagon acknowledged the challenge that climate change poses to its operations, including a dramatically increased need for intervention in future humanitarian crises. While military branches have begun global assessments of their vulnerabilities, many security experts say the work lacks senior level support in Congress and the administration. Military service preparations are not keeping up with environmental changes.
