What The U.S. Military Will Be Doing In A Climate Crisis Future With All Hell Breaking Loose
Last edited Thu Nov 14, 2019, 09:13 PM - Edit history (1)
By Michael T. Klare, Common Dreams, Nov. 14, 2019. ~ Add in disease epidemics, superbugs plus more.
The Situation Room, October 2039: the president and vice president, senior generals and admirals, key cabinet members, and other top national security officers huddle around computer screens as aides speak to key officials across the country. Some screens are focused on Hurricane Monica, continuing its catastrophic path through the Carolinas and Virginia; others are following Hurricane Nicholas, now pummeling Florida and Georgia, while Hurricane Ophelia lurks behind it in the eastern Caribbean.
-- U.S. Army personnel drive through flood waters in Fort Ransom, ND. (Photo: US Army)
On another bank of screens, officials are watching horrifying scenes from Los Angeles and San Diego, where millions of people are under mandatory evacuation orders with essentially nowhere to go because of a maelstrom of raging wildfires. Other large blazes are burning out of control in Northern California and Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington State. The National Guard has been called out across much of the West, while hundreds of thousands of active-duty troops are being deployed in the disaster zones to assist in relief operations and firefighting.
With governors and lawmakers from the affected states begging for help, the president has instructed the senior military leadership to provide still more soldiers and sailors for yet more disaster relief. Unfortunately, the generals and admirals are having a hard time complying, since most of their key bases on the East and West Coasts are also under assault from storms, floods, and wildfires.
Many have already been evacuated. Naval Station Norfolk, the nation’s largest naval base, for example, took a devastating hit from Monica and lies under several feet of water, rendering it inoperable. Camp Pendleton in California, a major Marine Corps facility, is once again in flames, its personnel either being evacuated or fully engaged in firefighting. Other key bases have been similarly disabled, their personnel scattered to relocation sites in the interior of the country.
Foreign threats, while not ignored in this time of domestic crisis, have lost the overriding concern they enjoyed throughout the 2020s when China and Russia were still considered major foes. By the mid-2030s, however, both of those countries were similarly preoccupied with multiple climate-related perils of their own -- recurring wildfires and crop failures in Russia, severe water scarcity, staggering heat waves, and perpetually flooded coastal cities in China -- and so were far less inclined to spend vast sums on sophisticated weapons systems or to engage in provocative adventures abroad.
Like the United States, these countries are committing their military forces ever more frequently to disaster relief at home.
As for America’s allies in Europe: well, the days of trans-Atlantic cooperation have long since disappeared as extreme climate effects have become the main concern of most European states. To the extent that they still possess military forces, these, too, are now almost entirely devoted to flood relief, firefighting, and keeping out the masses of climate refugees fleeing perpetual heat and famine in Asia and Africa...
More, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/11/14/welcome-world-which-all-hell-breaking-loose
Also: 'Superbugs Infect Millions And Kill Tens Of Thousands Each Year, CDC Chief Warns Post-Antibiotic Era 'Already Here'
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/14/superbugs-infect-millions-and-kill-tens-thousands-each-year-cdc-chief-warns-post
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