Earlier today, President Obama unveiled his latest initiative to reduce veteran unemployment: a $6 billion jobs corps program which, if approved by Congress, will create opportunities for returning service members to serve their country in a new capacity — as policemen, firefighters, and employees of the National Park Service.

In addition, General Eric Shinseki, the Secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs and himself a wounded war veteran, announced that the Small Business Administration will begin offering online entrepreneurial training courses to veterans and their families.

These initiatives are the latest example of the Obama administration’s deep and ongoing commitment to taking care of our men and women in uniform, even as they transition out of the service. Since coming into office, President Obama has substantially increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is the VA that assumes responsibility for service members as they leave the force and transition back to civilian life, and its programs will only become more essential as more men and women return from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last November, Obama signed the VOW to Hire Heroes Act, which provides companies with a substantial tax credit if they hire unemployed or disabled veterans. And the President has also used his executive authority to establish a national Veterans Job Bank, authorize 6-months of career counseling at locations across the country, and create My Next Move, an online database that helps connect veterans with jobs that build off their military experience.

Perhaps most importantly, President Obama, the first lady, and Dr. Jill Biden have brought public attention to the problem of veteran unemployment and the valuable skills that our service members possess. All the president and his administration have done to highlight this issue appears to have prompted employers to take a second look.

As a result of the President’s policy, the jobless rate among post-9/11 veterans — as this blog noted earlier today — fell four percent in January, from 13.1 percent in December to 9.1 percent today. This is a tremendous improvement from one year ago, when the unemployment rate for these veterans stood at about 15 percent. And the initiatives announced by President Obama today will continue to target veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, who suffer from unemployment rates significantly higher than those facing the broader veteran population.

President Obama has made much progress in tackling veteran unemployment. But much work remains to be done. The unemployment rate for veterans under the age of 25 is nearly 30 percent, more than twice the rate of civilians their age.

Moreover, with the war in Iraq over and U.S. involvement in Afghanistan coming to a close, the Pentagon has announced that it plans to reduce the ground forces to near their pre-war levels. This process will entail shedding about 100,000 ground troops, a move that will further increase the number of service members looking for civilian jobs.

Over the past decade, in the name of supporting our troops, Congress has steadfastly passed war supplemental after war supplemental. But it is imperative that this support does not end when our men and women in uniform come home. Congress should approve President Obama’s veterans jobs corps and allow these men and women who have served so admirably overseas to reinvest their efforts at home.

The report also showed a big drop for the entire veteran population, as the unemployment rate fell from 9.9 percent to 7.5 percent, lower than the national average.

The news is surely a welcome relief to the veteran community that has been hit especially hard by the weak economy. Unemployment rates for post-9/11 veterans have consistently remained above the national average, and a recent report issued by the U.S Army shows that the impact on returning soldiers has been devastating.

With the backing of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, an emphasis on hiring veterans was a key component of President Obama’s proposed American Jobs Act, which was blocked at every turn by congressional Republicans. After voting down the full jobs bill in the Senate and House, Congress passed the Vow to Hire Heroes Act as a standalone bill nearly unanimously in November. The law provides tax credits to employers who hire veterans.

Today, President Obama spoke in Arlington, Virginia to unveil further efforts to place an increasing number of returning veterans in jobs. He called for an additional $6 billion in spending to place as many as 20,000 veterans in jobs, and is asking Congress to increase funding in the next budget for programs that will place veterans in local police and fire departments.

Tracey Cooper Harris, Army Veterinarian

The Southern Poverty Law Center has filed suit on behalf of Iraq War Veteran Tracey Harris, who is fighting to obtain veterans’ disability benefits for her wife Maggie. Tracey continues to receive treatment for PTSD and multiple sclerosis, both of which the VA has determined are service-related, but Title 38 of the United States Code (veterans’ benefits) and the Defense of Marriage Act reject Maggie as a “spouse,” thus depriving them of the same spousal benefits as families with opposite-sex partners.

The inequities Tracey and Maggie face amount to thousands of dollars:

• As a single veteran rated as 80% disabled, Tracey receives compensation of $1,478 per month. As a married veteran, she should be entitled to $1,602 per month. This deprives her and Maggie of $1,488 every year — a full month’s worth of support.
• In the event of Tracey’s death, Maggie should be entitled to a minimum survivor’s benefits of $1,195. Because she is a same-sex spouse, she is entitled to no such benefit at all.
• Maggie would also not be eligible for burial benefits with Tracey, including a government headstone or marker, a burial flag, inscription of their names, burial together, and perpetual care of the burial site.

Tracey explains the importance of this suit:

I dedicated 12 years of my life to serving the country I love. I’m asking only for the same benefits the brave men and women who served beside me enjoy. By refusing to recognize our marriage, the federal government has deprived Maggie and me of the peace of mind that such benefits are meant to provide to veterans and their families.

An interesting twist in the suit involves Title 38, the code that limits benefits to spouses “of the opposite sex.” That language had little to do with the discriminating intent behind 1996′s Defense of Marriage Act, but was in fact the result of SPLC’s 1973 victory in the case, Frontiero v. Richardson. Before then, only wives of veterans could receive benefits — not husbands.

The West Point Chapel

VoteVets, a coalition of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, called on West Point to rescind Boykin’s invitation. “The presence of LTG Boykin at West Point would violate Army Values, as well as potentially be used as propaganda by the enemy and endanger our troops in combat,” Jon Soltz and Richard Allen Smith wrote in a letter to West Point’s superintendent.

In a statement issued to ThinkProgress, West Point’s Director of Public Affairs, Lt. Col. Sherri Reed, said the military academy stands by its decision to host Boykin and that the invitation is “in keeping with the broad range of ideas normally considered by our cadets”:

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point prepares cadets to be leaders of character with honor and consideration of others. In order to produce effective 21st Century leaders for our Army, and our Nation, cadets are purposefully exposed to different perspectives and cultures over the course of their 47-month experience at West Point.

The National Prayer Breakfast Service will be pluralistic with Christians, Jewish, and Muslim cadets participating. We are comfortable and confident that what retired Lt. Gen. Boykin will share about prayer, soldier care and selfless service, will be in keeping with the broad range of ideas normally considered by our cadets.

Sadly, the man who West Point has chosen as its representative of the Christian faith dangerously views our military conflicts as a holy war against Islam.

If those who have a degree of influence over Boykin do not speak up in protest, he will never understand that his views are wrong and hurtful. He could be better informed about Muslims and Islam if powerful organizations, institutions, and individuals help educate him, rather than giving sanction to his views.

Here’s what Boykin has said about Muslims in the past: there should be “no mosques in America“; Muslims worship an “idol“; “Islam is a totalitarian way of life, it’s not just a religion”; “it should not be protected under the First Amendment”; Muslims operate “under an obligation to destroy our Constitution.”

In the early days of the Iraq war, Boykin served in the Defense Department as a senior intelligence officer. Around that time, he appeared in full military dress at various churches, spouting bigoted rhetoric that casted the military conflicts as part of a religious crusade between Christians and the devil. In a 2004 report, the Pentagon Inspector General admonished Boykin for violating numerous internal regulations. “We recommend that the Acting Secretary of the Army take appropriate corrective action with respect to Lt. Gen. Boykin,” the report said.

VoteVets, a coalition of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, released a letter today, asking West Point President to rescind the invitation to Boykin. Jon Soltz, Iraq War Veteran and Richard Allen Smith, an Afghanistan War Veteran, write:

As has been articulated by GEN Petraeus, [statements similar to Boykin’s] remarks threaten our relationships with Muslims around the world, and thereby, our troops serving in harm’s way. LTG Boykin’s values are inconsistent even with current Army doctrine that is taught at the Joint Readiness Training Center, National Training Center and the Combined Arms Center, which instructs Army leaders to respect the Muslim culture as a part of counterinsurgency operations. It is counterproductive for our future Army leaders to hear the views of LTG Boykin, a man whose views are inconsistent with the values of the Army as an institution. [...]

Sir, as Veterans, we have the utmost faith in your leadership. As Veterans of these wars and men who have served in combat alongside Muslim Americans, we respectfully request that you retract LTG Boykin’s invite to the USMA Prayer Breakfast. The presence of LTG Boykin at West Point would violate Army Values, as well as potentially be used as propaganda by the enemy and endanger our troops in combat.

Read the full letter here.

Just today, Boykin was scheduled to speak at the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast in Ocean City, Maryland. People for the American Way and the Council on American-Islamic Relations had waged a vigorous campaign against his appearance.

The Baltimore Sun endorsed that effort this week, writing, “Make no mistake: This is not an issue of freedom of speech or of any of the constitution’s protections for religious expression that Mr. Boykin seems so eager to deny to those who don’t share his own Christian faith.” Boykin has every right to speak, but organizations that invite him “need to make clear whether they agree with Mr. Boykin’s views.” If not, they should not sponsor his hate speech.

We have contacted West Point to seek a reply, and we will post an update if we hear back.

Overall, about 636,000 Americans were living on the streets or in shelters last year. (HT: Kay Steiger)

But this morning, during an appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, the former Pennsylvania senator embraced the most government-centric health care system of them all: veterans health care — a fully integrated structure of government payers and providers. Santorum said his parents met on a government veterans base and said his father worked as a government health care provider:

SANTORUM: The answer is [veterans health care] should be excluded from any kind of reduction. These are people, men and women, who stepped forward to defend this count country. The country has a special obligation to them as a result of that. these are heroic people. [...] I grew up on VA grounds, my mom and dad met at a VA after World War II. [...] And I got a chance to meet veterans and work with them and volunteer at the hospital. And i can tell you that there problems in the VA health care system. There’s a lot of problems with quote government-run medicine. [...] The one thing we can’t do is cut those benefits.

Watch it:

The veterans’ health care structure of doctors and hospitals is not without its problems, but it actually provides veterans with benefits that are the envy of the rest of the health care system — including private payers and providers. A study by the RAND Corporation found that “VA patients were more likely to receive recommended care” and “received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment and follow up.”

The fully integrated veterans’ health care structure of doctors and hospitals actually provides veterans with benefits that are the envy of the rest of the health care system — including private payers and providers (which Romney regularly touts as a better alternative to government programs). A study by the RAND Corporation found that “VA patients were more likely to receive recommended care” and “received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment and follow up.”

Romney has previously floated the idea of partially privatizing the veterans health care system, but eventually backed away from the idea. “We have a VA system that needs to be improved and I’ve got no plans to change that other than to make it better and to invest more money in providing for our veterans,” he said.

Veterans groups condemned a very similar proposal from then-GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2008, arguing that providing “rural veterans greater access to VA-sponsored care exclusively through private providers” would undermine the existing health care system. In a report titled “The Independent Budget,” the groups said that the VA’s “specialized health-care programs” would “suffer irreparable impact by the loss of veterans from those programs.” Mitt Romney also briefly flirted with the idea during Veterans Day, but later abandoned it.

Gingrich himself has previously praised the veterans health care system, calling it “a model for modernization and a model of using information technology that’s very impressive” during a veterans issues forum in Iowa on December 10th.

Veterans groups swiftly condemned the proposal, and today Romney himself backed away from privatization in an interview with the Nashua Telegraph:

ROMNEY: I have no proposal of that nature [to privatize the VA]. We has a group of veterans and said, ‘tell me about the quality of your care.’ Some were concerned about the quality of their health care. I said, ‘what kind of options do you have, what do you think about a system that let you go to private as well as VA hospitals?’ The response was mixed, but I don’t have any proposal of that nature. We have a VA system that needs to be improved and I’ve got no plans to change that other than to make it better and to invest more money in providing for our veterans.

Watch it:

Romney’s characterization of veterans’ reactions is rose-colored to say the least. In 2008 — when then-GOP presidential nominee offered a very similar proposal — AMVETS, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars argued that while veterans should have access to private care, providing “rural veterans greater access to VA-sponsored care exclusively through private providers” would undermine the existing health care system. In their annual report, “The Independent Budget,” the groups argued that the VA’s “specialized health-care programs” would “suffer irreparable impact by the loss of veterans from those programs” and argued that the prosthetic research program “would lose focus and purpose were service-connected and other enrolled veterans no longer present in VA health care.”

The fully integrated veterans’ health care structure of doctors and hospitals actually provides veterans with benefits that are the envy of the rest of the health care system. A study by the RAND Corporation found that “VA patients were more likely to receive recommended care” and “received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment and follow up.” So Romney is right to back away from efforts to privatize the system that already delivers “higher quality of care” than private providers. Now if only he would apply that same logic to some of his other health care proposals.

MAJOR GARRETT: And when you talk about tri-care, that’s the military medical system. What do you mean when you say, “Reform,” does that mean cuts in benefits?

MICHELLE BACHMANN: No. I think that we need to have modernization. That’s what the biggest problem is right now with– with Social Security, with Medicare, with Medicaid. We’re continuing to abide by the models that we had when they were first originated. There’s very few businesses that maintain their similar business practices 45 years after inception or 75 years after inception. We have to modernize. But we also know what the future is in health care, don’t we? It is Obama Care. And quite likely, Tri-care, Medicare, all of these will collapse under President Obama, and everyone will be put into Obama Care. No one want to be– in Obama Care.

Watch it:

While the Affordable Care Act does not affect TRICARE or veterans health care, Bachmann’s proposals to curtail the government-funded program will. In January, she proposed and later withdrew a wildly unpopular plan to slash $4.5 billion in veterans services and reduce disability compensation for 150,000 veterans. But over the summer, Bachmann pledged to support and bolster the existing government health care program. “It is our duty, first and primarily, to protect our veterans and to make sure that you receive not only the respect, but also the care that you have paid for very heavily with your service to our nation,” Bachmann told members of the American Legion in August. “As president, I will assure that those who serve today as well, and in the past, have the highest access to the best care, both of health, mental health and rehabilitative care that the world has to offer.”

But all of the impacts occurring simultaneously will have an even more devastating synergy (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts“).  It means the rich countries will be far less likely to be offering much assistance to the poorer ones, since there will be ever worsening catastrophes everywhere simultaneously so we’ll be suffering at the same time.  Heck, this deep economic downturn and record-smashing disaster season has already exacerbated media myopia and compassion fatigue to help those around the world staggered by floods and droughts.

And that suggests another deadly climate impact — far more difficult to project quantitatively because there is no paleoclimate analog — may well affect far more people both directly and indirectly: war, conflict, competition for arable and/or habitable land.

We will have to work as hard as possible to make sure we don’t leave a world of wars to our children. That means avoiding decades if not centuries of strife and conflict from catastrophic climate change. That also means finally ending our addiction to oil, a source — if not the source — of two of our biggest recent wars.

Just yesterday, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan “said rising temperatures and rainwater shortages are having a devastating effect on food production. Failing to address the problem will have repercussions on health, security and stability.”

The NYT reported in 2009:

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

That’s a key reason 33 generals and admirals supported the comprehensive climate and clean energy jobs bill last year, asserting “Climate change is making the world a more dangerous place” and “threatening America’s security.”  The Pentagon itself has made the climate/security link explicit in its Quadrennial Defense Review.

Sadly, the chance that humanity will avert catastrophic climate impacts has dropped  sharply this year (see “The failed presidency of Barack Obama, Part 2“).  And that means it is increasingly likely we face a world beyond 450 ppm atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, which in turn means we likely cross carbon cycle tipping points that threaten to quickly take us to 800 to 1000 ppm.

It is a world not merely of endless regional resource wars around the globe. It is a world with dozens of Darfurs and Pakistani mega-floods, of countless environmental refugees “” hundreds of millions by the second half of this century “” all clamoring to occupy the parts of the developed world that aren’t flooded or desertified.

In such a world, everyone will ultimately become a veteran, and Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day may fade into obscurity, as people forget about a time when wars were the exception, a time when soldiers were but a small minority of the population.  And if we don’t act swiftly and strongly to stop it, the worst impacts could last a long, long time (see NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe and Nature Geoscience: ocean dead zones “devoid of fish and seafood” are poised to expand and “remain for thousands of years”).

So when does this start to happen?

Thomas Fingar, “the U.S. intelligence community’s top analyst,” sees it happening by the mid-2020s:

By 2025, droughts, food shortages and scarcity of fresh water will plague large swaths of the globe, from northern China to the Horn of Africa.

For poorer countries, climate change “could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Fingar said, while the United States will face “Dust Bowl” conditions in the parched Southwest“¦.

He said U.S. intelligence agencies accepted the consensual scientific view of global warming, including the conclusion that it is too late to avert significant disruption over the next two decades. The conclusions are in line with an intelligence assessment produced this summer that characterized global warming as a serious security threat for the coming decades.

Floods and droughts will trigger mass migrations and political upheaval in many parts of the developing world.

For the latest literature review and projections, see “Must-read NCAR analysis warns we risk multiple, devastating global droughts even on moderate emissions path,” the source of this figure, where “A reading of -4 or below is considered extreme drought”:

The National Center for Atmospheric Research, “Climate change: Drought may threaten much of globe within decades,” explains the implications of such low readings of the Palmer Drought Severity Index [PDSI]:

By the 2030s, the results indicated that some regions in the United States and overseas could experience particularly severe conditions, with average decadal readings potentially dropping to -4 to -6 in much of the central and western United States as well as several regions overseas, and -8 or lower in parts of the Mediterranean. By the end of the century, many populated areas, including parts of the United States, could face readings in the range of -8 to -10, and much of the Mediterranean could fall to -15 to -20. Such readings would be almost unprecedented.

The PDSI in the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl apparently spiked very briefly to -6, but otherwise rarely exceeded -3 for the decade (see here).

And, of course, we’ve seen that even in areas expected to become wetter, can experience an extreme heat wave so unprecedented that it forces the entire country to suspend grain exports:

• Russian Meteorological Center: “There was nothing similar to this on the territory of Russia during the last one thousand years in regard to the heat.”
• Russian President Medvedev: “What is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past.” NYT: “Russia Bans Grain Exports After Drought Shrivels Crop”

See also Nature Publishes My Piece on Dust-Bowlification and the Grave Threat It Poses to Food Security

Significantly, the UK government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, laid out a scenario similar to Fingar’s in a 2009 speech to the government’s Sustainable Development UK conference in Westminster. He warned that by 2030, “A ‘perfect storm’ of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions,” as the UK’s Guardian put it.

You can see a five-minute BBC interview with Beddington here. The speech is online. Here are some excerpts:

We saw the food spike last year; prices going up by something in the order of 300%, rice went up by 400%, we saw food riots, we saw major issues for the poorest in the world, in the sense that the organisations like the World Food Programme did not have sufficient money to buy food on the open market and actually use it to feed the poorest of the poor.

So this is a major problem. You can see the catastrophic decline in those reserves, over the last five years or so, indicates that we actually have a problem; we’re not growing enough food, we’re not able to put stuff into the reserves”….

So, what are the drivers? I am going to go through them now very briefly.

First of all, population growth. World population grows by six million every month “” greater than the size of the UK population every year. Between now and”¦ I am going to focus on the year 2030 and the reason I am going to focus on 2030 is that I feel that some of the climate change discussions focusing on 2100 don’t actually grip”¦. I am going to look at 2030 because that’s when a whole series of events come together.

By 2030, looking at population terms, you are looking at the global population increasing from a little over six billion at the moment to about eight billion”…

… you are going to see major changes but particularly in the demand for livestock — meat and dairy….

… By 2030, the demand for food is going to be increased by about 50%. Can we do it? One of the questions. There is a major food security issue by 2030. We’ve got to somehow produce 50% more by that time.The second issue I want to focus on is the availability of fresh water”¦. The fresh water available per head of the world population is around 25% of what it was in 1960. To give you some idea of this; there are enormous potential shortages in certain parts of the world”¦ China has something like 23% of the world’s population and 11% of the world’s water.

… the massive use of water is in agriculture and particularly in developing world agriculture. Something of the order of 70% of that. One in three people are already facing water shortages and the total world demand for water is predicted to increase by 30% by 2030.

So, we’ve got food — expectation of demand increase of 50% by 2030, we’ve got water — expectation of demand increase of 30% by 2030. And in terms of what it looks like, we have real issues of global water security.

…. where there is genuine water stress [in 2025 is] China and also parts of India, but look at parts of southern Europe where by 2025 we are looking at serious issues of water stress”….

So, water is really enormously important. I am going to get onto the climate change interactions with it a little bit later but water is the one area that I feel is seriously threatening. It is so important because a shortage of water obviously interacts with a shortage of food, there are real potentials for driving significant international problems — what do you do if you have no water and you have no food? You migrate. So one can have a reasonable expectation that international migration will occur as these shortages come in.

Now, the third one I want to focus on is energy and, driven by the population increase that I talked about, the urbanisation I talked about and indeed the movement out of poverty”…. For the first time, the demand of the rest of the world exceeded the demand of energy of the OECD …. Energy demand is actually increasing and going to hit something of the order of a 50% increase, again by 2030.

Now, if that were not enough … those are three things that are coming together. What will the world be like when that happens? But we also have, of course, the issue of climate change. Now, this is a very familiar slide to you all but we are shooting for a target of two degrees centigrade, a perfectly sensible target. There is enormous uncertainty in the climate change models about that particular target. It is perfectly reasonable to say ‘shouldn’t we be shooting for one degrees centigrade or, oddly enough, it is perfectly reasonable to say ‘shouldn’t we be shooting for three degrees centigrade’, the only information we have is really enormously uncertain in terms of the climate change model.

Shooting for two seems a perfectly sensible and legitimate objective but there are enormous problems. You are talking about serious problems in tropical glaciers “” the Chinese government has recognised this and has actually announced about 10 days ago that it is going to build 59 new reservoirs to take the glacial melt in the Xinjiang province. 59 reservoirs. It is actually contemplating putting many of them underground. This is a recognition that water, which has hitherto been stored in glaciers, is going to be very scarce. We have to think about water in a major way….

The other area that really worries me in terms of climate change and the potential for positive feedbacks and also for interactions with food is ocean acidification….

As I say, it’s as acid today as it has been for 25 million years. When this occurred some 25 million years ago, this level of acidification in the ocean, you had major problems with it, problems of extinctions of large numbers of species in the ocean community. The areas which are going to be hit most severely by this are the coral reefs of the world and that is already starting to show. Coral reefs provide significant protein supplies to about a billion people. So it is not just that you can’t go snorkelling and see lots of pretty fish, it is that there are a billion people dependent on coral reefs for a very substantial portion of their high protein diet.

… we have got to deal with increased demand for energy, increased demand for food, increased demand for water, and we’ve got to do that while mitigating and adapting to climate change. And we have but 21 years to do it….

I will leave you with some key questions. Can nine billion people be fed? Can we cope with the demands in the future on water? Can we provide enough energy? Can we do it, all that, while mitigating and adapting to climate change? And can we do all that in 21 years time? That’s when these things are going to start hitting in a really big way. We need to act now. We need investment in science and technology, and all the other ways of treating very seriously these major problems. 2030 is not very far away.

Some of this can be avoid or minimized if we act now. Some of it can’t. But if we don’t act strongly now, then by Veterans Day 2030, many of the global conflicts will either be resource wars or wars driven by environmental degradation and dislocation (see “Warming Will Worsen Water Wars). Indeed that may already have started to happen (see “Report: Climate Change and Environmental Degradation Trigger Darfur Crisis).

For one discussion of the kind of wars we might be seeing, albeit for the year 2046, here is a three-part radio series on Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer, a Canadian journalist and historian of warfare.

For all of the above reasons, veterans and security experts and politicians of all parties have begun working together to avoid the worst.   A key leader on climate and energy security has been the conservative Virgina Republican, John Warner, who pushed hard to pass the clean energy bill — because he is a former Navy secretary and former Senate Armed Services Committee chair and because he is a former Forest Service firefighter now “just absolutely heartbroken” because “the old forest, the white pine forest in which I worked, was absolutely gone, devastated, standing there dead from the bark beetle” thanks in large part to global warming.

Warner’s is “trying to build grass-roots support for congressional action to limit global warming,” as Politics Daily reported. “He is traveling the country to discuss military research that shows climate change is a threat to U.S. national security.” Here is part of PD‘s interview:

PD: Does the responsibility fall to us to respond to the consequences of climate change?

JW: Not exclusively, but we’re often in the forefront of response to these things. We’re the nation with the most sealift. The most airlift. We have more medical teams which are mobile, more storehouses of food and supplies to meet emergencies. And throughout our history, from the beginning of the republic, America’s always had to respond to certain humanitarian disasters.

PD: What are some examples of destabilization due to climate?

JW: One clear case of it is Somalia. [In the early 1990s] the prolonged drought began to tie up the economy, the food supplies. There was a certain amount of political and economic instability. Where you have fragile nations . . . a serious climactic problem will come along, with a shortage of food or water, and often those governments are toppled. And then they fall to the evils of . . . terrorism or others who try to exploit these fallen governments. You saw it in Darfur. You saw it in Somalia. This political instability and weakness is given the final tilt by a problem associated with climactic change.

Our choice today is clear. We can continue listening to the voices of denial and delay, assuring that everyone ultimately becomes a veteran of the growing number of climate-related conflicts.

Or we can launch a WWII-scale effort and a WWII-style effort to address the problem as Hansen and I and many others have called for. That is our most necessary fight today.

CLICK HERE TO JUMP TO COMMENTS

This post is an update.

Related Posts:

• Nicholas Stern: Climate inaction risks a “global war”
• Scientific American asks “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?”
• Must have PPT #1: The narrow temperature window that gave us modern human civilization
• Steven Chu on climate change: “Wake up,” America, “we’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California”
• Sen. Barrasso (R-WY) seeks to block intelligence on the national security threat posed by climate change. He needs to see the Fingar.
• Juan Cole: The media’s failure to cover “the great Pakistani deluge” is “itself a security threat” to America

CAP’s Larry Korb wrote this week in the New York Times that Panetta has laid out some “excellent proposals for reducing the defense budget” but he “grossly exaggerates” in his fearmongering about what the trigger would do to the military. And yesterday the Defense Secretary played the “last card” in his fear campaign, the National Journal reports:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has been steadily escalating his warnings about the impact of the deep cuts facing the Pentagon if the congressional super committee fails to reach a deal. On Thursday, he played the last – and strongest — card in his deck, arguing that the hundreds of billions of dollars of mandatory cuts would directly imperil U.S. national security. [...]

“In effect, it invites aggression,” Panetta said during the new conference, just his second since taking office in July. [...]

Panetta said those cuts would leave the military “a hollow force” which “retains its shell but lacks a core.”

“It’s a ship without sailors. It’s a brigade without bullets. It’s an air wing without enough trained pilots,” Panetta said. “It’s a paper tiger.”

This just simply is not true. As Korb noted previously, cutting military spending by $1 trillion over the next decade — a figure that incorporates the trigger cuts — would “in real terms, allow the Pentagon to spend at its 2007 level for the next decade.” And by Panetta’s own standard, how would reducing the U.S. military presence in Latin America and Africa invite aggression?

On the issue of defense spending, “Panetta has really gone off the deep end,” writes Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal, “His public statements sound like those of a Democrat too insecure to talk sensibly about the future of the US military and national security policy.”

Veterans protest with the 99 Percent near Wall Street

The signs of a veterans movement are everywhere, from new groups dedicated to supporting veterans in the occupy movement, to thousands of veterans showing up at street actions. And despite condescending rhetoric from the right-wing media, veterans have every reason to be there:

1.) Veterans Deserve Economic Justice: Thousands of veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are finding a grim job market. Veterans who served since 9/11 experience a 12.1% unemployment rate, which is higher than the national average, while one in three male veterans are jobless. Recent reports have showed that the number of homeless veterans is surging, while there are insufficient job placement programs.

2.) Veterans Embrace Occupy Wall Street Out Of Love For Country: A growing number of veterans groups are enthusiastically embracing the movement. Although some are demonstrating against a terrible economic conditions, many are doing so out of simple patriotism. Thousands have marched near Zuccotti Park and at other occupy encampments with a message about taking their country back from the grip of lobbyists and predatory financial institutions. One iconic sign, held by a veteran at Occupy Wall Street, summed up the sentiment: “Second time I’ve fought for my country. First time I’ve known my enemy.”

3.) The Banks Are Preying On Veterans: Big banks have found ways to rip off and ruin the men and women who placed their lives on the line for this country. According to a recent whistleblower lawsuit, some of the nation’s biggest banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan Chase, “defrauded veterans and taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars by disguising illegal fees in veterans’ home refinancing loans.” Fly-by-night scam for-profit universities, many of which are owned by Wall Street investment banks, heavily target veterans with fraudulent educational programs. While military families struggle to get by all over the country, defense contractor CEO’s earn as much as $19 million a year.

4.) K Street Domination Of Government Means Defense Money Goes To War Profiteering Corporations Over Veterans: America spends more on the military than most of our rival nations combined. Yet much of that money, because of the influence of defense contractors and other private military interests, is spent on expensive weapons we never use instead of on rank and file soldiers. Revolving door lobbyists, who go from the Pentagon to K Street firms, have secured over a trillion in wasteful spending to companies like Lockheed Martin.

5.) During The Economic Downturn, Veterans Programs Are Being Cut And Privatized As Well: As Republicans and their allies have succeeded so far in pushing an austerity agenda of massive government cuts, veterans have also been targeted. According to a recent analysis by Military.com of a CBO study outlining suggested cuts, Congress is debating proposals to cap military basic pay and limiting veterans health benefits. Notably, the Defense Business Board is also considering a move to privatize the military pension program, swapping it out with a 401k system. If there is another crisis on Wall Street, veterans could lose see their retirement benefits wiped out if such a system is put in place.

In many cases, veterans have been the most visible victims of police brutality: like in Boston, where police violently raided a group of peaceful veterans occupying a city plaza, and in Oakland, where police fractured the skull of Scott Olson, an Iraq veteran, with a shot from a projectile aimed at protesters.

Occupy Wall Street solidarity protests will hold Veterans Day events to stand with veterans in cities across America, from Colorado Springs to San Diego, to Syracuse, to Chicago, to Denver, to Missoula, to Sacramento, to Gainesville, and beyond.

The Center for American Progress has put together this list showing the unfortunate facts behind veterans’ homelessness, illustrating the struggle that the men and women of the armed forces face when they return home:

50 percent: Rate at which veterans are more likely than other Americans to become homeless. The Obama administration has set a goal of ending veteran homelessness by 2015.

About 75,000: Number of veterans who are homeless on any given night, according to estimates from the Veterans Administration.

About 20,000: Number of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who were homeless in the past five years according to the Veterans Administration.

5.5 percent: Percentage of homeless vets who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan in the overall homeless population, according to the Veterans Administration.

This Veteran’s Day, spare a though for those vets who served their country and yet still spend the night out on the streets. See here for more numbers illustrating “the challenges that confront our service members and veterans before, during, and after deployments, from combat stress injuries to unemployment.”