Senator Kerry Featured in HuffPo
ASP Board Member Senator John Kerry (D-MA) was recently featured in the Huffington Post in an op-ed addressing the national security implications of climate change.
In the piece, Senator Kerry writes about the urgency of the issue, and the need for Congress to address solutions now:
Facts, as John Adams said, are stubborn things. Here are a few you need to know: Atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels have risen 38% in the industrial era, from 280 to 385 parts per million (ppm). Scientists have warned that anything above 450 ppm — a warming of 2 degrees Celsius — will result in an unacceptable risk of catastrophic climate change.
The truth is that the threat we face is not an abstract concern for the future. It is already upon us and its effects are being felt worldwide, right now. Scientists project that the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer of 2013. Not in 2050, but four years from now.
Make no mistake: catastrophic climate change represents a threat to human security, global stability, and — yes — even to American national security.
Senator Kerry’s Foreign Relations Committee recently held a hearing on climate change and national security at which ASP President Vice Admiral Lee Gunn testified. The Admiral also recently wrote a letter to the editor for the New York Times on the issue, which was published last month.
See also Senator Kerry’s piece from this summer in The Daily Beast on the potentially catastrophic, and costly, results that climate change will yield if nothing is done to curb it, and what that means for United States foreign policy.
