What the Pentagon Understands that the
White House Doesn't

Tim Weiskel

1) Our Crippled Imagination
2) 'Imagining the Unthinkable:' What took so long?
3) Why the White House Won't Get It: Rethinking the American Dream
Notes

Our Crippled Imagination

      We are in more difficulty than most people imagine. In fact, we are in more trouble than most people can imagine. We are just not up to it. In the culture of consumption our imaginations have collapsed in the face of the task before us. We know something is wrong, but we cannot imagine how things might be different, how things might be changed. We just give up, give in, and move on to something less disturbing, less threatening, more comforting. It is as if we think that with a click of the remote control button we can turn off the world -- or at least flip to another channel, something more "optimistic," more gratifying, more satisfying.

      In large part the problem arises because our imaginations have been sadly flattened, crushed, warped and molded to the shape required of us as compliant members of a consumer society. Long before we had anything to say about it, our tastes, ambitions and desires were the subject of calculated manipulation by those who wanted us to buy something. Or more accurately, they wanted us to nag our parents and whine until we got our way with them to buy the Cocoa Puffs, the Lego toys, the Barbie dolls, the G.I. Joe with battle gear and the designer jeans we simply had to have. If they refused, we felt unloved, unwanted. Worse yet, our playmates in kindergarten and our classmates through all those years of high school would make us feel hopelessly marginal, out of it in a world in which we sought desperately to belong. Having things, wearing things, showing things, acquiring yet more things had become a way of life -- our way of being part of the American dream.

      By the time we got to college, it was often too late to look back. Very few stopped to think it all through. The onrush of events and endless petty course requirements kept us from taking time out to think. In principle we had the chance and the mental equipment to undertake the task, but the demands of the hoped for career soon intruded, and parents and friends told us to focus on mastering new skills to get a job after graduation. Then came the demand for more qualifications, further schooling, more debts, and further jobs to pay those debts. We had no time to think about where we were going, and we made no time for the "big think" about where our culture of consumerism is heading or where it is driving us.

      In fact, for the most part, we are no longer capable of sustained reflection on consumer culture. It is so much a part of our surroundings that we cannot step back and see it in context. We fail to see its place in the larger world of constraint. Our public leaders systematically discourage such thoughts as they continue to promote a politics of perpetual consumerism based on the driving metaphor of "more, bigger, better." No public figure has run for office on a platform of "enough is enough, balance is best." No one has called for "self-imposed, self restraint" -- not even in the wake of September 11th 2001. This may have been a rude interruption to our peace of mind and our economy, but we are urged by all our public leaders to get back to "business as usual" -- or else "the terrorist will have won." It is as if simply buying things is an act of patriotism. Perhaps it is for this reason that S.U.V. sales continue to climb. Although elementary school science should be enough to convince anyone that infinite expansion in a finite world is not possible, we continue to imagine that America will be an exception to the laws of nature. We continue to build our culture on a false premise that non-renewable resources will be infinitely available even though on some level we know this cannot be true.

      In effect our imaginations have been crippled. We have lived so long in the world of constructed commercial illusions and "free market" sloganeering that we can no longer imagine reality. Little wonder that our leadership does not understand the wider world we live in and asks, with what appears to be genuine puzzlement: why do they hate us?

'Imagining the Unthinkable:' What took so long?

      In 1992, a group of America's leading scientists appointed by the National Academy of Sciences published a report entitled: Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises (1). This was a very serious and sobering study, but it remained largely ignored by both the political leadership and by the public at large in America. The reason is simple. Its conclusions were too disturbing for public consumption. In effect, the facts the scientists revealed were uncomfortable for a culture addicted to consumerism. The "inevitable surprises" the report referred to clearly undercut the economics of unlimited growth and the politics of perpetual expansion that have become that currency of American public discourse. The scientific facts risked awakening people from the American dream so it is little wonder that they were ignored.

      Both the White House and a large portion of the American public have failed to understand what is at stake, but the Pentagon, at least, has begun to investigate the issue. In October 2003 the Pentagon commissioned a report to consider a plausible "scenario" of what might occur in the event of abrupt climate change.(2) In this commissioned study they sought to ask themselves:

What if we really do live in a world of constraint? What if those constraints become starkly apparent to everyone -- even us -- through a series of dramatic shifts in the structure and function of the world's ecosystem?

The results are not pretty, nor were they made public. The American press and corporate news media appeared not to have been aware of the Pentagon's reflections -- or if they were, they preferred not to let the public know about them.

      This was somewhat strange because the topic itself was not completely new, and its implications were enormous for the everyday life of all Americans. The general information was not censored. It was widely available. Scientific journals had already widely published and fully discussed some of the initial evidence presented in the 2002 National Academy of Sciences report. In March 2003, more than six months before the commissioned Pentagon paper, Science magazine, the leading American journal of the scientific community, published a detailed article entitled, "Abrupt Climate Change" reviewing the state of scientific knowledge on the topic and concluding explicitly that "...policy-makers should consider expanding research into abrupt climate change, improving monitoring systems, and taking actions designed to enhance the adaptability and resilience of ecosystems and economies."(3). In fact, although the public remains largely ignorant of the issues, in the scientific community, major figures have raised these problems and discussed in detail the mechanisms of climate shift for the past decade.(4)

      Perhaps it was in response to the repeated appeals by scientists that the Pentagon undertook its review. In any case, when its October 2003 document was eventually "leaked" to the press, it was presented to the public in the form of an article aimed initially at the business community. On Monday, January 26, 2004, Fortune Magazine published "CLIMATE COLLAPSE: The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare" by David Stipp.(5) -- three months after the Pentagon report and a full ten months after the broadly published appeal in Science magazine. The Fortune article summarizes some of the main findings of the October 2003 paper, and it includes particular evidence of warning signs of impeding abrupt change.(6)

      One might have expected that once the news was out in the business community in Fortune magazine it would spread rapidly through the rest of the American popular press and broadcast media. Not so. Basically, the American press remained almost completely silent on the issue with the exception of a few web-listings referring to the Stipp article in Fortune.

      Eventually, the American people learned of the Pentagon's report primarily through the foreign press. On Sunday, February 22, 2004 the Observer and Guardian Unlimited in London carried an article by Mark Townsend and Paul Harris, entitled: "Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us," in which it presented to the British public what had been told to the American business community almost a month earlier on 26 January.(7) Townsend and Harris included bulleted items to make it perfectly clear what the Pentagon was considering(8). The list of observations is instructive.

· Future wars will be fought over the issue of survival rather than religion, ideology or national honour.
· By 2007 violent storms smash coastal barriers rendering large parts of the Netherlands inhabitable. Cities like The Hague are abandoned. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento river area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south.
· Between 2010 and 2020 Europe is hardest hit by climatic change with an average annual temperature drop of 6F. Climate in Britain becomes colder and drier as weather patterns begin to resemble Siberia.
· Deaths from war and famine run into the millions until the planet's population is reduced by such an extent the Earth can cope.
· Riots and internal conflict tear apart India, South Africa and Indonesia.
· Access to water becomes a major battleground. The Nile, Danube and Amazon are all mentioned as being high risk.
· A 'significant drop' in the planet's ability to sustain its present population will become apparent over the next 20 years.
· Rich areas like the US and Europe would become 'virtual fortresses' to prevent millions of migrants from entering after

      Subsequently, the English-speaking press around the world took up the story and reprinted portions of the information and arguments made in both the earlier Fortune the Observer stories. In Pakistan a story was actually published a week before the London Observer article entitled: "Secretive Pentagon report forecasts climate wars," Hi Pakistan, (15 February 2004).(9) In India the Hindustan Times carried the article: "Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war," (23 February 2004),(10) and throughout the Arab World, Al Jazeera published an item called: "The Pentagon's Gloomy Climate Report; Here comes the Sun," (24 February 2004)(11).

      Still, with the exception of the Fortune piece for the business community, the story on the Pentagon's study remained largely out of the American mainstream press. On the same day that Al Jazeera readers heard of the study throughout the Arab world (February 24th), the alternative press in America finally carried an interview with Paul Harris one of the co-authors of the London Observer article. But those who read or listened to the mainstream press, there was essentially nothing on the issue until the New York Times published a short and confusing article by Alan Revkin mentioning the study in the Sunday, News of the Week in Review section of the paper on February 29th.(12) It was not until March 3rd that a program on the National Public Radio broadcast system chose to open public discussion of the October 2003 Pentagon paper by interviewing one of its authors, Paul Schwartz in its talk-program, On Point.

Why the White House Won't Get It: Rethinking the American Dream

      Despite all the attention to these issues around the world, the White House seems not to take its own Pentagon seriously. In fact, it is is alleged that it refuses to take the entire scientific community seriously as well. Some observers feel that when these issues are made into a movie -- with the usual Hollywood plot lines of an adventure story -- perhaps then, they will become more understandable to the current administration. In any case there is going to be a "blockbuster" movie presented to the public on topics of extreme weather events and abrupt climate change on Memorial Day weekend, entitled "The Day After Tomorrow."(13)

      Whether or not those in the White House view the forthcoming film, it is doubtful that they will get the point. One obvious reason for this is that they are preoccupied with other glaring failings at this particular time.(14) As numerous commentators have observerd, never before in American history has an administration behaved so shamefully and been so thoroughly humiliated as this one has in its unilateral international exploits. Having received an extraordinary and near universal outpouring of sympathy and support in the days immediately following September 11, 2001, the current American administration proceeded to launch revenge attacks in an irrational and ill-advised manner that won it the hatred and distrust of virtually all its natural friends and allies. Military means are not widely seen as effective long-run measures for implanting American interests abroad. In fact, America's reckless and unquestioned backing for repressive and brutal regimes in the Middle East and its clumsy and callous killing of innocent civilians throughout Afghanistan and Iraq has guaranteed that new waves of militants will be willing to sacrifice their lives for generations to come to oppose and eventually defeat the United States and all it stands for.

      For the rest of the world what the U.S. stands for is becoming glaringly apparent. Despite its rhetoric about democracy and its talk of human rights, large portions of the Third World -- especially those in the oil-endowed nations of the Middle East -- are convinced that the United States is engaged in all out "resource wars" for global control of petroleum. Given its refusal to respond to environmental realities and its predilection to expand petroleum resources to prop up its version of petro-intensive industrial growth, there is little that can be said to counter this impression.

      It would be too simple to suggest, however, that if its current problems in Iraq were solved or if a regime change were to occur in a the next American election, these problems could be simply reversed. Whoever occupies the White House, the structural problems will remain. The United States is committed to becoming a more -- not less -- energy consumptive society. More and more people are coming to depend on fewer and fewer crop varieties grown with dwindling water supplies and increasingly heavy subsidies from petroleum inputs. All this is happening when the conditions of abrupt climate change may well involve the failure of large global agricultural regions. It was not very long ago when America experienced its worst collective environmental disaster. This was a "climate event" and we now understand it as something related to global sea-surface temperature and winds.

      In the forthcoming elections Americans will have a choice. But the choices available seem equally committed to impossible strategies of continuous growth. There may well be disputes over how to grow or how fast to grow or in whose interests we should grow; but the ideology of perpetual growth is likely to remain unshaken in public discourse. Further, it seems inevitable that one crisis after another will crop up to grab public attention. Or perhaps the crises will be intentionally provoked. Afterall in some cases crises can be politically convenient, for the American electorate invariably supports anyone who appears to be the reigning "leader" in time of crisis.

      The problem remains, however, that no American leadership currently on the horizon sees the forthcoming environmental crisis with adequate clarity. No political party of any importance is offering anything more than one or another variation on the theme of continuous consumerism. The perpetual politics of optimism and illusion of continuous economic expansion is blinding us and preventing us from seeing what is in store for the Earth. For all of us in grip of breathless consumerism, the immediate is crowding out the important, and in our confusion we continue to prefer to walk around in a perpetual dream state rather than awake to the reality that others in the world perceive so clearly.

*

Notes

1) Ocean Studies Board (OSB), Polar Research Board (PRB), Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (BASC) Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises (Washington, D. C., National Academy of Sciences, 2002).

2)  P. Schwartz & D. Randall, An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, United States Department of Defense, (October 2003).

3) "Abrupt Climate Change," Science, 299 (5615), (28 March 2003) 2005-2010.

4) Wallace S. Broecker, "Thermohaline Circulation, the Achilles Heel of Our Climate System: Will Man-Made CO2 Upset the Current Balance?," Science, 278 (5343), (28 November 1997) 1582-1588.

5) Stipp, David, "CLIMATE COLLAPSE: The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare," Fortune, (26 January 2004).

6) David Stipp, CLIMATE COLLAPSE: Growing Evidence of Scary Change," Fortune, (26 Jauary 2004).

7) Mark Townsend and Paul Harris "Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us," The Observer - [The Guardian Unlimited], (22 February 2004).

8) Mark Townsend, and Paul Harris, "Key findings of the Pentagon," The Observer - [The Guardian Unlimited], (22 February 2004).

9) Hi Pakistan, "Secretive Pentagon report forecasts climate wars," Hi Pakistan, (15 February 2004).

10) The Hindustan Times, "Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war," HindustanTimes.Com, (23 February 2004).

11) Mike Whitney, "The Pentagon's Gloomy Climate Report; Here comes the Sun," Al Jazeerah, (24 February 2004).

12) Andrew C. Revkin, "The Sky is Falling! Say Hollywood and, Yes, the Pentagon," The New York Times - Week in Review, (29 February 2004).

13) 20th Century Fox, "The Day After Tomorrow: Where Will You Be?" [Official website of the forthcoming movie. 28 May 2004] Trailers - Small Medium Large

14) Jeremy Lovell, "War, terror hunt puts environment on hold," ENN - Environmental News Network, (4 February 2004).