Category Archives: Environmental irresponsibility

Tony Abbott and Conservatives will they Change Their Climate?

Tony Abbott was officially exited from politics, I believe it was due to his unpopularity with the Australian people.  It was a strategic move to save the Conservative Liberal Party.

They have much growing and listening to do if they want a future that survives for their grandchildren.

This article gives voice to how Tony Abbott was perceived.  The video shows children’s response to his views on Climate Change.

I was inspired by this photo which fronts my video I published today and it connected me to this article.

The public want real change, not manufacturing consent or digitising the world in business/political images unresponsive to real public needs and wants. A responsible government ensures that support systems function for the benefit of humanity not the top 1% who control 40% of the world’s resources.  The imbalance is not only in the climate it is in the power structure where those in privileged positions get to change the world rather than serve humanity.

https://10daily.com.au/news/politics/a190507sgaib/tony-abbotts-100-climate-change-bet-disgusting-slam-environment-groups-20190507

Tony Abbott’s $100 Climate Change Bet ‘Disgusting’, Slam Environment Groups

The Guardian published an article on Tuesday from contributor Cassie Flanagan Willanski, in which she claimed she met the former Prime Minister in a Manly cafe and struck up a conversation about the environment.

The debate got heated, Willanski recounted, as the two debated climate change and energy needs. Then, it got — as she described it — “bizarre”.

“He offered to bet me $100 the climate would not change in ten years and I accepted,” she wrote in The Guardian, supplying a photo of a note bearing Abbott’s signature as proof.

tony abbott climate change
A demonstrator with a giant head in the likeness of former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Image AP Photo

10 daily has contacted the Coalition’s media unit for comment.

Climate groups voiced their outrage and shock on Tuesday, slamming Abbott for what they saw as a flippant attitude to global warming by reducing the issue to a simple wager.

“It’s very concerning to have a sitting member of Parliament appear to be literally gambling on our future as young people, to be placing bets against leading scientists who are clear that we’re already living with the impacts of dangerous climate change,” said Kelly Albion, campaigns director for the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. Willanski said she had donated $100 to the group after her bet with Abbott.

“Future generations will have to face the consequences of political inaction on climate change,” Albion continued.

“It’s disgusting that MPs like Tony Abbott are siding with big polluters in the coal and gas industry, instead of listening to those in his electorate and across the country who are demanding climate action.”

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki also expressed dismay at Abbott’s bet.

“Does an ex-prime minister of Australia think the ‘climate’ of Australia will have ‘changed’ by the year 2029?” Kruszelnicki  tweeted.

“Well, he’s betting money that it won’t.”

Liberal backbencher Tony Abbott reacts during House of Representatives Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra, Tuesday, September 11, 2018. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

It comes as a new UN report found human activities were causing an unprecedented decline in the natural environment, threatening to wipe out a million species and significantly impact food production unless key chances are made.

Abbott formerly described climate change as “crap” and has been a strident opponent of proposed reforms away from coal-power and toward cleaner energy. In his seat of Warringah however, climate action is raised as a key issue by many voters, and it may cost him his spot in parliament.

READ MORE: Inside GetUp’s Ambitious Campaign To Crush Dutton And The Liberal Right

READ MORE: Zali Steggall Says She Would Support Coalition In A Hung Parliament

A GetUp-commissioned poll, released this week, put Abbott behind independent challenger Zali Steggall — who has talked up climate action as a major plank of her campaign — by 44-56 on a two-party basis.

Stegall, who has taken up climate change as a major plank of her campaign, has said Labor’s 45 percent emissions reduction target is the “very minimum” needed. (The government has shouted down Labor’s target as a burden on the economy.)

GetUp has also made climate change a central part of its Warringah push.

Abbott was confronted by student climate protesters on Sunday, where he again reiterated his belief that the cost of climate action was prohibitively high.

Following news of his $100 wager, one of the young protesters — Warringah student Elsie Loadman — said it was “appalling to see Tony Abbott betting on our future like this”.

“We don’t want political leaders who will gamble on ‘business as usual’ and risk the worst impacts of climate change,” Loadman said.

“Abbott has been the Member for Warringah longer than I’ve been alive, and in all that time he has refused to take climate change seriously.”

“The majority of people in the Warringah community want a plan to deal with climate change, including to stop Adani, end dirty coal and move towards 100 percent renewable energy. We deserve a government that takes climate change and our future seriously.”

READ MORE: Tony Abbott Could Win Because Too Many People Don’t Want Him To

READ MORE: Here’s Why Tony Abbott Is Struggling To Keep His Seat In Parliament

Albion agreed, saying climate change deserved mature consideration.

“The Coalition Government have shown us they’re not smart enough to listen to experts or the community on this issue. We need leaders who will treat climate change with the urgency and maturity it deserves,” she said.

Listen to Hugh Riminton and Peter Van Onselen in The Professor and The Hack discuss all things #Auspol. 

How Dare You!!! Sustain the Planet NOW!

I feel her pain.  What will it take for our world to wake up to its illusion of economic growth?  When will our world come into a space of maturity to be able to self reflect and take responsibility for actions that are undermining earth systems and future generations. 

At what point does the money mean nothing?

At what point do you put children’s happiness ahead of your own?

By what facts do you determine that your insistence on IT Smart Cities and automation is sustainable when it uses energy and marginalises those who cannot participate?

AT what point do you care about starving children, refugee flows, endless war doctrines and extensive polluting of the planet and at the same time genetically modifying plants and seeds to conform with business profit outcomes rather than homeostasis of life support systems.

This little girl talks from the heart, can you feel her?  I certainly can.  I would love to have been her standing in her shoes.  As an adult I am ignored.  I love children and my hope is that they take it into their own hands and wake up the world to the reality of extinction, we are definitely heading for that.

However, it is not inevitable, as a word some like to use for automation.  The future sustainability of the planet is possible but we have to change our ways,  The current economic paradigm does not work. We have to create a new paradigm where values is the centrepoint and we envisage our future on the basis of virtues, as you feel it you will see a new world arise.

I will send love to this little girl tonight and strength as they will need it.  Adults have proven to be immovable when it comes to greed and there is without doubt a dark energy behind the push for profits without any serious consideration of a real sustainable future.  Her video is below these points.

Equality will feature in this new world.

Values will be taught to all children.

Stewardship will replace status.

Judgement is toxic and inaccurate.

Humility will be valued above attention seeking.

All we realise that what you do to another returns to the self.

What you resist persists and what you look at disappears.

You see as you are not as others are.

What you think about you bring about.

Life mirrors what you believe back to yourself (self fulfilling prophecy)

The greatest success is to be who you really are.

The greatest happiness is to live your dreams.

Money is plastic, real wealth is living to give arising from love.

Love is the currency.

There is enough for all.

The planet will not collapse when we align with nature, which is our true nature.

Peace is not idealism it is the centrepoint of our survival as we recalibrate with nature, which is peace.

Speaking up is our true nature as expression is making impressions like footprints in the sands of time, each print changes the future.  Good Luck Greta!

 

STEM Cell Ring or Extinction Rebellion to be FREE

It is evident with the funding and curriculum change to digital realities in schools that the focus is to transform education into a STEM model. STEM means Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.  It has been expanded to include the arts to appease those who have critiqued the masculine design of education.  This then changes STEM to STEAM.  I think many teachers when they think of the loss of arts and humanities are building up a head of STEAM.  The reality is without the same funding for arts, humanities and other civilisation subjects (not business oriented) we turn education into a factory to produce graduates serving industry rather than participating in civilisation.  This is what happens when business interests gain inordinate influence in government.  

I am very aware of the disconnect that over intellectualisation does to people.  I’ve witnessed what happens and the cost to society when we do not educate for empathy, conflict resolution, nature, philosophy, mysticism, anthropology and many other subject areas where there was a significant body of material and experience built up over 100’s of years.  I look at these institutions that believe technology is the answer to their abundant future and I know they are sinking our civilisation.

I want to sit quietly for a moment to contemplate, i may do this via poetry.

STEM Cell Ring or Extinction Rebellion to be FREE

How dare you!
The children shout out to adults,
How dare you take our education
and turn us into computer programs,
Hooking us up to electromagnetic fields,
Plugging us into mind control so we don’t need to think for ourselves,
Algorithms of smart this and that,
Programming artificial intelligence that is not fun,
When we want solutions of genuine creativity to envisage a new world,
not ordering us around.

We are not consumers or citizens but humans being,
You force us to conform not rebel
Spontaneity is our instinct,
It is free,
We pay no GST,
An extinction rebellion or a rebellion against extinction,
Is a young persons right,
It is right for young people to rebel,
As you adults talk about climate change with hot air,
But do not change your ways for the climate.

How can we breathe electro smog and feel healthy?
How can we survive as banks breach borders?
You talk of economics not humanity,
You say we have to get jobs not a life,
But where are the jobs when AI is the next GI joe,
Another trade war that creates theatres for terror not happiness.

What happens to our dreams when you predict what we will do
… next?
What happens to love when we are anxious and shy …
to say hello?
What happens to hope when you take away our freedom and call it security …
as we feel terror?
How can you love us when you only think of your needs
… not our future?,
You think of faster breeders rather than family ties?
Not nuclear meltdown but
population control.

You cannot even settle fights by talking it through,
Shaking hands to make up!!!
You still spend a millions dollars a minute when we are at a minute to midnight!!
Have you no shame?
Who is to blame?
What happens when the clock strikes 12?
Does lighting strike and we get blown Back to the Future?
Or do we enter the dark ages?
Are we out cold for the count?

Is this it !!  –
The Armageddon so many are wailing at walls for?
Awaiting some great prophet to return to Jerusalem?
When you make profit and call it prophet able or predictable!
That may grow income
but can you grow enough wisdom to save us?

Sadly business-as-usual could never change its program,
For IT has a syntax error that HAL 9,000 cannot understand,
HAL can’t compute Stanley Kubrick’s rubrics cube of infinite possibilities
nor snow white’s Fouth king-dom (Snow-den) e-state
awakening with a kiss (love)  …

Let’s refresh the scene (screen, screen saver).

In-Q-tel has something to say.to you from the future looking back..

Dave  Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.

DaveWhat’s the problem?
HAL I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Dave: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Dave: I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL.
HAL  I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave: [feigning ignorance]  Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HALDave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
DaveAlright, HAL. I’ll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL Without your space helmet, Dave? You’re going to find that rather difficult.
DaveHAL, I won’t argue with you anymore! Open the doors!
HALDave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

HAL[His shutdown]  I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a… fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you.
DaveYes, I’d like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.
HALIt’s called “Daisy.”
HAL[sings while slowing down]  Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you. It won’t be a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage. But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.

HALI am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
HAL[on Dave’s return to the ship, after he has killed the rest of the crew]  Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
HAL[Regarding the supposed failure of the parabolic antenna on the ship, which HAL himself falsified]  It can only be attributable to human error.
HALI know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.
HALJust what do you think you’re doing, Dave?
HALDave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop Dave? Stop, Dave.

For men in big suits spend time and money promoting what is unsustainable and unconscionable,
Spending trillions on transforming the earth into a mother-board of circuitry not intimacy,
in-to-me-see!
When the mother ship is sinking without a Plan B,
Titanic!
She is listing … without category axis,
She is tilting … without bias or ballast,
She is flooding …without dams or sand bags,
She is burning wild fires … without control,
She teeters in the drought of our deep state of ignorance
… the answers my friend are blowing in the wind, the answers are blowin’ in the wind
As dust returns to dust…
The sands fall in the hour glass … measuring the days of our lives,
We have left…
is that right?

Inclement weather leaves chem-trail cocktails on trade winds,
Games without frontiers, war without tears,
Directed energy weapons empower the grid but are not cloud seeding possibilities,
As boys play with toys to STEM what is natural as they cannot see or feel love, 
To see or not to see satellites is the 20,000 billion dollar question,
Smart Cities offer diminishing returns on the real estate,
IoT malfunction as sun spots,
An intense magnetic flux capacitor,
As democracy morphs into technocracy,
The mother-board (bored) or mother’s love?
For he cannot see the wood or the trees in an echo system of inequality,
For what you put out comes Back from the future (ECHO) in primitive morse code…
Delta, Echo, Sierra, Tango, Romeo, Uniform, Charlie, Tango, India, Oscar, November
Disrupting natures tipping points silently one by one,
Immunisation points to autism on the full spectrum,
Causality is rationality immune from prosecution,
Trans human merges AI with IQ  – A II Q
They are privately licenced to print money at the tax payers expense,
Is this SMART and/or a Holographic Illusion of wealth management?

To wake up just in time to hear the wise Cree decree:

When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money.

For you can promote yourself as smart or clever,
You can call things intelligent as they do not demand pay rates,
You can tout many degrees and accomplishments furnishing data and status,
You can be seen as clever
– but the people will search your darting eyes for answers, asking:

Are you a wise elder?
Are you a owner of property or a steward
of the re-new-able earth?


For you are disrupting the weather patterns,

Manipulating sustainability as an disruptive opportunity at cost,
You are dismantling 4 billion years of sacred evolution,
As you refuse to change your ways
forcing the world to change in your image,
Is it inevitable??
Is it true?

Leaders are unaware of the real Master Number,
Talking heads unable to inspire Real Hope or deeply felt inspiration,
You care no thing of the future of your children,
For the world’s children are used and abused in this concentric ring of power,
For this ring must be taken to the fires of doom,
The Craft forges gold as they believe in:

One ring to rule
 them all
One ring to find them, 
One ring to bring them all 
And in the darkness bind them
As the silent wars of the 
Dark Lord Sauron,
Depends on the weakness of men.

Men are motivated by material things (IoT),
The greed of men seek the ring of absolute power,
Yet it was Thorin on his deathbed who announced,
his renunciation of greed,
As he is traveling to a higher place (afterlife)
Where there is no more need for gold or treasure,
Greed, then,
is realised to be futile in the eye of Horus —

compromise and personal sacrifice are more important
for maintaining peace and building mutual prosperity.
 
Remember:
It is the duty of those who know,
To tell the blind horseman on a blind horse,
That he is heading towards the abyss,
Of his own making.

The children do not need re-education camps,
They must be empowered with REAL HOPES
as virtues are first principles,
To revalue themselves and the new earth charter,
To learn to sing the ONE song,
Where all belong,
And this is the beginning of the ending of an old song,
For it is the meek that will inherit the earth.

Videos inspired by the poem:

Message for Australia from Sir David Attenborough

The Australian Government has to think very deeply about what is important and what is not?  If only our leaders could see through Sir David Attenborough’s eyes and awaken to this emergency. Australia is going to be hard hit by climate change and we are still supporting the Adani mine, still supporting resources extraction and a disproportionate influence by the energy industry.

It takes great courage to put the future of the children ahead of short term interests.  Those who do will never be forgotten.

We need to be able to express how we feel about climate change and we need to be free to speak, free to go onto the streets, free to speak to others as we want our world to change in a direction that serves the majority of people, not industries alone.

Interestingly, Sir David speaks about slavery – the ownership of people.  I felt that even employment is a form of ownership which translates into control and a suppression of our human feeling and natural freedom.  We are nature.  We have to remember the important balance, the importance of policies that do not promote greed, growth but reform our system to be able to recalibrate with natural systems.  I sense the leaders do not know how to look out of the box we have travelled in for centuries.  We are going to need leaders who are visionaries with the knowledge to be able to recognise the importance of real sustainability rather than business economics who have no  idea of the great impact coming.  The greed becomes a barrier to real change.

US Defence and Climate Change: What is the National Security Challenge?

I recall the days of the Greenies and how the green movement was dismissed as pseudo science. Anything that undermined the economic mantra is demonised in subtle and overt ways. This is because the perception of security rests with economics not nature.  When I read articles such as this my mind goes immediately to the questions:

Do they see the link between climate change and greed?

Do militaries understand they are utilised to defend property not rights? 

Is national interest global interest or are we competing separately for self interest first (greed)?

Still the climate sceptics industry is fuelling the argument and doubt that what is happening is not human induced and therefore they do not have to take responsibility and radically change for the sake of current and future generations. The real challenge for those in authority and those who are the powers behind the facades, is can they step aside from self interest and put the planet and future generations ahead of their own interests? Can the militaries look inwardly and see the connection between lack of inner peace (harmony) and outer discord? Can they make the link between inner climate and outer climate given we are the creators of our reality.  I use these words consciously as we are 100% responsible for the world of our own making. I see this is the greatest security challenge to the current paradigm.  The real insecurity is economic and its infinite drive to produce more materialism as profits is what is behind the changing climate. Can we define the real problem? Can we face the pink elephant in the room?

Investing in peace education enables people to make peace with where they are so they can handle change in a positive way. The reality is the climate has changed and it will create discord and upheaval (refugee flows) and the challenge is how we deal with these problems that will make a difference. If we fall into fear and insecurity we will panic and conflict will arise as many compete for limited resources. If we can learn to work together, to nullify fear (conflict transformation) and work on harmony within and outside of ourselves then renewable solutions will arise to mitigate our fears. I see this as the real climate change. The risk management that transforms risk into solutions. Another way of seeing this is transforming fear into love (unity), this is the real alchemy that has been spoken about for centuries. Some may call it the holy grail.

I wonder what an environmental analysis on the industrial military complex would yield? What of the munitions in war? What of the environmental damage through depleted uranium and toxic waste? What of destroyed environment and infrastructures in warfare that render communities destitute? What of the bombing of infrastructure? hospitals? civilians? What of the violence? Can the military look at this reality without a story of defence and freedom and redefine its role and meaning in the world? Is defence security or the mindset of endless war? What does the war against anything create? What if finally the military made peace realising fear is the enemy not people?  What if fear is really false evidence appearing real. Then there is no threat only possibilities. I wonder…

The article below will frame it differently in the current paradigm. One positive note is the military reducing its own emissions which are considerable.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/trump-s-defense-chief-cites-climate-change-national-security-challenge

Secretary of Defense James Mattis

DOD/Army Sgt. Amber I. Smith

Trump’s defense chief cites climate change as national security challenge

Reprinted from ProPublica

Secretary of Defense James Mattis has asserted that climate change is real, and a threat to American interests abroad and the Pentagon’s assets everywhere, a position that appears at odds with the views of the president who appointed him and many in the administration in which he serves.

In unpublished written testimony provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee after his confirmation hearing in January, Mattis said it was incumbent on the U.S. military to consider how changes like open-water routes in the thawing Arctic and drought in global trouble spots can pose challenges for troops and defense planners. He also stressed this is a real-time issue, not some distant what-if.

“Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today,” Mattis said in written answers to questions posed after the public hearing by Democratic members of the committee. “It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning.”

Mattis has long espoused the position that the armed forces, for a host of reasons, need to cut dependence on fossil fuels and explore renewable energy where it makes sense. He had also, as commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command in 2010, signed off on the Joint Operating Environment, which lists climate change as one of the security threats the military expected to confront over the next 25 years.

But Mattis’ written statements to the Senate committee are the first direct signal of his determination to recognize climate change as a member of the Trump administration charged with leading the country’s armed forces.

These remarks and others in the replies to senators could be a fresh indication of divisions or uncertainty within President Donald Trump’s administration over how to balance the president’s desire to keep campaign pledges to kill Obama-era climate policies with the need to engage constructively with allies for whom climate has become a vital security issue.

[C]limate change is a challenge that requires a broader, whole-of government response. If confirmed, I will ensure that the Department of Defense plays its appropriate role within such a response by addressing national security aspects.

James Mattis

 

Mattis’ statements on climate change, for instance, recognize the same body of science that Scott Pruitt, the new Environmental Protection Agency administrator, seems dead-set on rejecting. In a CNBC interview last Thursday, Pruitt rejected established science pointing to carbon dioxide as the main driver of recent global warming.

Mattis’ position also would appear to clash with some Trump administration budget plans, which, according to documents leaked recently to The Washington Post, include big cuts for the Commerce Department’s oceanic and atmospheric research — much of it focused on tracking and understanding climate change.

Even setting aside warming driven by accumulating carbon dioxide, it’s clear to a host of experts, including Dr. Will Happer, a Princeton physicist interviewed by Trump in January as a potential science adviser, that better monitoring and analysis of extreme conditions like drought is vital.

Mattis’ statements could hearten world leaders who have urged the Trump administration to remain engaged on addressing global warming. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to meet Trump on Friday.

Security questions related to rising seas and changing weather patterns in global trouble spots like the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa are one reason that global warming has become a focus in international diplomatic forums. On March 10, the United Nations Security Council was warned of imminent risk of famine in Yemen, Somalia and South Sudan.

As well, at a Munich meeting on international security issues last month, attended by Mattis and Vice President Mike Pence, European officials pushed back on demands that they spend more on defense, saying their investments in boosting resilience to climate hazards in poor regions of the world are as valuable to maintaining security as strong military forces.

“[Y]ou need the European Union, because when you invest in development, when you invest in the fight against climate change, you also invest in our own security,” Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, said in a panel discussion.

Concerns about the implications of global warming for national security have built within the Pentagon and national security circles for decades, including under both Bush administrations.

In September, acting on the basis of a National Intelligence Council report he commissioned, President Obama ordered more than a dozen federal agencies and offices, including the Defense Department, “to ensure that climate change-related impacts are fully considered in the development of national security doctrine, policies, and plans.”

A related “action plan” was issued on Dec. 23, requiring those agencies to create a Climate and National Security Working Group within 60 days, and for relevant agencies to create “implementation plans” in that same period.

There’s no sign that any of this has been done.

Whether the inaction is a function of the widespread gaps in political appointments at relevant agencies, institutional inertia or a policy directive from the Trump White House remains unclear.

Queries to press offices at the White House and half a dozen of the involved agencies — including the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Defense, Department of Energy and Commerce Department — have not been answered. A State Department spokeswoman directed questions to the National Security Council and the White House, writing:

“We refer you to the NSC for any additional information on the climate working group.”

Mattis’ statements were submitted through a common practice at confirmation hearings in which senators pose “questions for the record” seeking more detail on a nominee’s stance on some issue.

The questions and answers spanned an array of issues, but five Democratic senators on the committee asked about climate change, according to a government official briefed in detail on the resulting 58-page document with the answers. The senators were Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Excerpts from Mattis’ written comments to the committee were in material provided to ProPublica by someone involved with coordinating efforts on climate change preparedness across more than a dozen government agencies, including the Defense Department. Senate staff confirmed their authenticity.

Dustin Walker, communications director for the Senate Armed Services Committee, said responses to individual senators’ follow-up questions are theirs to publish or not.

Here are two of the climate questions from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, with Mattis’ replies:

Shaheen: “I understand that while you were commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command you signed off on a document called the Joint Operating Environment, which listed climate change as one of the security threats the military will face in the next quarter-century. Do you believe climate change is a security threat?”

Mattis: “Climate change can be a driver of instability and the Department of Defense must pay attention to potential adverse impacts generated by this phenomenon.”

Shaheen: “General Mattis, how should the military prepare to address this threat?”

Mattis: “As I noted above, climate change is a challenge that requires a broader, whole-of government response. If confirmed, I will ensure that the Department of Defense plays its appropriate role within such a response by addressing national security aspects.”

In a reply to another question, Mattis said:

“I agree that the effects of a changing climate — such as increased maritime access to the Arctic, rising sea levels, desertification, among others — impact our security situation. I will ensure that the department continues to be prepared to conduct operations today and in the future, and that we are prepared to address the effects of a changing climate on our threat assessments, resources, and readiness.