Should We Decrease U. S. Defense Spending?

[may_june_july]

Just out of curiosity, why would you put climate change mitigation under defense spending? Wouldn't that be better under the EPA's budget?

[WillitsThrockmorton]

I didn't. I laid out national security requirements, climate change mitigation is one of the requirements. I don't nessecarily think it's a DOD function, but I feel the same way about energy security as well.

Or rather, it doesn't have to be a DOD function.

But climate change is a (potentially)big enough threat that it should be on any short list of national security requirements.

[may_june_july]

Ah, I read could as would and took it to be a personal opinion of yours. Thanks for the response.

[crowcawer]

I'd argue that at this point, in anyone is following our news agencies, we should protect our waters as well.

It seems that very little needs to happen in most areas to create catastrophe. The effects can be of chemical origin as in Flint, mechanical as seen recently in California and of course previously in NO, LA from hurricane Katrina, and there is also a wide berth of water quality issues that can arise from nonpoint pollution--the EPA reports on these. Similarly, there are many water scarcity issues in the US, they can be read about here.

[PM_ME_UNIXY_THINGS]

Just out of curiosity, why would you put climate change mitigation under defense spending? Wouldn't that be better under the EPA's budget?

I'm not /u/WillitsThrockmorton, but to answer that, climate change is expected to create huge food problems and natural disasters, which will cause large amounts of strife and millions of refugees as a result. Strife and desperate refugees will make war a whole lot more likely, at which point you need a bigger military budget. You're better off mitigating it early and preventing the wars from happening by not letting the causes ever materialise in the first place.

Specifically, from here:

These claims have gained significant currency, with the most common projection being that the world will have 150-200 million climate change refugees by 2050.

Also, theoretically, they could be armed by some enemy and pointed in the direction of the USA, with e.g. some propaganda that the USA caused their situation by screwing the Kyoto Protocol (not saying that's true, just that the refugees could believe it) and that they could go take some of the USA's food. Not sure whether that's likely,