The US House of Representatives recently passed an intelligence authorization bill demanding that the nation’s intelligence agency draft a National Intelligence Estimate to evaluate anticipated geopolitical effects of global climate change as a risk to national security.  Though it is certainly within the scope of duties of the CIA to investigate issues of national security, the Agency should not be spending valuable time speculating on this kind of situation.  

Contrary to what some alarmists contend, the amount and scope of climate change expected in the short term is an issue still being debated among climate scientists.  Resolving this issue, to the extent that it’s even possible, requires a number of assumptions about the likely increases in global emissions of “greenhouse gases,” and incorporates uncertainty in estimates of the resulting global temperature increases.  As a result, potential impacts of these changes, such as sea-level rise, changes in precipitation patterns and extreme weather such as hurricanes, are even more uncertain.  That is not to say these effects are not possibilities, but rather that the likelihood of these possibilities and their relative extents is not well understood.

Though the bill would not require the CIA to conduct the primary scientific research, any analysis of the impacts of climate change would necessarily incorporate all the uncertainty at every level.  As a result, an assessment of the geopolitical effects of these potential impacts will be very speculative. Worse, it could easily become something of a wild goose chase: a national security analysis of a particular and uncertain potential impact of an uncertain increase in global temperatures from an assumed and uncertain level of greenhouse gas emissions.  

Certainly, climate change could have security implications. Famine resulting from drought, coastline changes due to sea-level rise, and other potential effects of climate change could lead to geopolitical and socioeconomic problems.  In that sense, analyzing possible outcomes of these problems is a legitimate activity.  However, other groups could conduct this type of analysis, and in fact are already doing so.  Other agencies and researchers, both in and out of the government, are capable of speculating on the potential socioeconomic consequences of various predicted scenarios, without diverting attention from more pressing matters of national security.

It is not as though the Central Intelligence Agency is lacking important things to do.  For example, there are very certain threats from North Korea and Iran, one with nuclear weapons, the other trying to get them. Global terrorism is also a full-time task for intelligence, one that calls for precision, not speculation. The CIA’s resources of time and personnel should be spent time on those priority issues, not speculating on the effects of a scientific question that is still in debate in terms of what effects are likely.

It is also not as though the issue of climate change will go otherwise unstudied. Indeed, this issue is a growth industry of sorts, with an Oscar-winning documentary on its side. Through various programs, the U.S. federal government alone already spends an estimated $6.5 billion annually on climate-change issues.

To put this in perspective, imagine if Congress suddenly demanded that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) analyze key intelligence data on Al Qaeda, North Korea, or Iran. It is similarly unwise to involve the CIA in climate change. National security is a strategic goal and for that very reason it is important to deploy our intelligence resources wisely. Congress should cancel the climate mandate and, if it reaches his desk, President Bush should veto the measure.