Climate Change Tops List of Security Threats in Pacific, says ADM Locklear

Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, commander of U.S. Pacific
Command, likely surprised many when he said that the biggest long-term security
challenge in the Pacific is climate change.

Bryan Bender of the Boston Globe reported the statements on
Saturday. Here is an excerpt from his article:

Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, in an interview at a
Cambridge hotel Friday after he met with scholars at Harvard and Tufts
universities, said significant upheaval related to the warming planet “is
probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that
will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other
scenarios we all often talk about.’’

“People are surprised sometimes,” he added, describing the
reaction to his assessment. “You have the real potential here in the not-too-distant
future of nations displaced by rising sea level. Certainly weather patterns are
more severe than they have been in the past. We are on super typhoon 27 or 28
this year in the Western Pacific. The average is about 17.”

Locklear said his Hawaii-based headquarters — which is
assigned more than 400,00 military and civilian personnel and is responsible
for operations from California to India, is working with Asian nations to
stockpile supplies in strategic locations and planning a major exercise for May
with nearly two dozen countries to practice the “what-ifs.”

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