White House Refuses to Rank Terrorism vs. Global Warming

The White House wants no part of the “ter­ror­ism versus cli­mate change” threat-rank­ing game.

Re­pub­lic­ans have long poun­ded top Demo­crats—in­clud­ing Hil­lary Clin­ton, Bernie Sanders, and John Kerry—for deem­ing cli­mate change a danger on par with (or ahead of) ter­ror­ist at­tacks, say­ing their state­ments un­der­score a fail­ure to take groups such as IS­IS ser­i­ously.

But when Ben Rhodes, Pres­id­ent Obama’s deputy na­tion­al se­cur­ity ad­viser, was re­peatedly asked on Monday how the two stack up, he re­fused the premise.

“They are both crit­ic­ally im­port­ant, and we have to do both at the same time,” Rhodes said at a news con­fer­ence in Par­is. “They pose dif­fer­ent threats. Ob­vi­ously there is an im­me­di­ate threat from ter­ror­ism that has to be dealt with to pro­tect the Amer­ic­an people, to pro­tect our al­lies and part­ners, and to root out the can­cer of ter­ror­ist net­works that we see not just in Ir­aq and Syr­ia but in dif­fer­ent parts of the world.

“I think over the long term, clearly we see the po­ten­tial for cli­mate change to pose severe risks to the en­tire world,” he said at a brief­ing at the Par­is cli­mate-change sum­mit that Obama is at­tend­ing.

Asked again, Rhodes replied: “I am not go­ing to rank them be­cause they are dif­fer­ent.

“You have to do sev­er­al things at once. Look, we have a threat of ter­ror­ism. We are deal­ing with it by go­ing after ISIL in Ir­aq and Syr­ia. We have a threat from nuc­le­ar pro­lif­er­a­tion, which is why we com­mit­ted sig­ni­fic­ant ef­fort to get­ting the Ir­an deal in place, so you would not have the fur­ther spread of nuc­le­ar weapons. And you have a threat from cli­mate change that, again, poses a na­tion­al se­cur­ity chal­lenge.”

De­fense and in­tel­li­gence ana­lysts have for years warned that cli­mate change could worsen prob­lems, such as drought and flood­ing, that can make weak or chaot­ic states more un­stable, and help to fuel mi­gra­tion and con­flict. But more tan­gibly, it’s dif­fi­cult to link any one weath­er event to cli­mate change.

The threats of cli­mate change and ter­ror­ism—and the nex­us between them—have got­ten fresh at­ten­tion dur­ing the 2016 elec­tion cycle and more re­cently still in the run-up to the United Na­tions cli­mate talks in Par­is that began Monday.

Early last year, former House Speak­er Newt Gin­grich and Re­pub­lic­an Sen. John Mc­Cain bashed Kerry for call­ing cli­mate change “per­haps the world’s most fear­some weapon of mass de­struc­tion” and a threat on par with risks in­clud­ing ter­ror­ism, epi­dem­ics, and poverty.

In Septem­ber of 2014, be­fore she was a pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate, Clin­ton called cli­mate change the “most con­se­quen­tial, ur­gent, sweep­ing col­lec­tion of chal­lenges we face.” That drew swift push­back from Rand Paul at the time. (Clin­ton down­shif­ted slightly in her form­al cam­paign launch last June, call­ing cli­mate change “one of the de­fin­ing threats of our time.”)

The is­sue flared again in mid-Novem­ber when Bernie Sanders said at a de­bate that cli­mate change is the greatest se­cur­ity threat fa­cing the U.S. Sanders said cli­mate change is “dir­ec­tly re­lated to the growth of ter­ror­ism,” a com­ment that drew a more dir­ect link than ex­perts and sci­ent­ists who study the is­sue have offered.

And pub­lic de­bate on the is­sues in­tens­i­fied when Obama said last week that go­ing ahead with the Par­is cli­mate sum­mit is a “power­ful re­buke” to ISIL after the rad­ic­al group’s deadly at­tacks in that city. Re­pub­lic­ans in­clud­ing Carly Fior­ina and Jeb Bush seized on those com­ments.

“The pres­id­ent said something that I found breath­tak­ing in its na­iv­eté, which is that the best way to show our dif­fer­ences with IS­IS is to con­vene a meet­ing about cli­mate change,” Bush told con­ser­vat­ive ra­dio host Hugh He­witt last week. “That’ll show ‘em,” he said in mock­ing Obama.

But Obama stood his ground on Monday in his speech at the open­ing of the United Na­tions cli­mate talks in Par­is, where dip­lo­mats hope to fi­nal­ize a new pact to stem glob­al warm­ing.

“We sa­lute the people of Par­is for in­sist­ing this cru­cial con­fer­ence go on, an act of de­fi­ance that proves noth­ing will de­ter us from build­ing the fu­ture we want for our chil­dren,” Obama said.

(Image via lexaarts / Shutterstock.com)