Rome didn’t fall in a day, but America might. The United States is currently neglecting the newest arms race. This arms race isn’t against a state. It is more elusive than Osama Bin Laden and as dangerous to America as a nuclear attack. Yet, despite the fact that this scourge will ruinously attack all nations, this specter has the potential to loom darkest over the United States of America. Is it painfully obvious yet that the crisis I am referring to is Climate Change?
It is scientifically well understood that Climate Change has been responsible for rising sea levels, increased drought in the heartland, and the salinification of aquifers from California to Florida. Don’t trust me? Look at the data for yourself. (One great non-partisan resource is the National Paleoclimatic Data Center.)
But, what is less understood is how Climate Change will impact America’s immediate geopolitical feature.
The last great threat to American supremacy, communism, challenged the American military to amass an incredible amount of communications infrastructure, from satellites and spy planes to the Internet. In what might be called a great leap forward for American industry, the IT revolution was born out of the declassification and spread of these technologies to the private sector. Accordingly, American corporations became the purveyors of these expensive IT services to the world.
America’s response to this challenge must be the same. The armed forces’ readiness is affected by reliance on foreign oil. But worse than the problem of readiness, is the fact that our privileged economic position, as the most advanced nation in the world, may be stripped. Green technology would circumvent this problem, increase efficiency (imagine a green Hummer) of the military, and all the while create new a market sector with jobs to get us out of the recession. Yet, unlike with Communism, this nightmare has not been readily accepted as the greatest threat to our common security.
Failure of the government to act decisively and massively fund research to solve this problem will result in a magnetic reversal of geopolitical poles from America to China. China has far outpaced the United States in green energy growth rates in recent years and has recently announced, on the 60th birthday of General Mao, the architect of the great leap forward, that it will undertake a similarly lofty project to advance green technology.
Nothing could be worse than going from a position of power brokering technology to the world to a position as a technology consumer while your economic coffers are worn down by damage from increased climate instability.
The Obama administration, Congress, and our nation’s biggest budget recipient, the Defense Department, need to work in tandem to address the most immediate consequences of Climate Change and therefore preserve America’s elite position in the geopolitical world.
—Steve Braun is a senior in the College of Arts and Science. He can be reached at steven.a.braun@vanderbilt.edu.
