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On Earth Day, April 22, 2021

Biden’s Intelligence Director Vows to Put Climate at ‘Center’ of Foreign Policy

April 23, 2021,

Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, struck a note of urgency in telling world leaders that climate change must be “fully integrated” with national security. President Biden committed the United States to cutting emissions by half by the end of the decade at a virtual Earth Day summit.

• https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/22/us/biden-earth-day-climate-summit

As the years have passed, GreenPolicy360/Strategic Demands have continued to press for a new security vision, new definitions of how to define 'national security'. Now, it begins to be seen how the US, with other nations, will move to set new security goals and a new comprehensive strategy recognizing the climate crisis is upon us. The setback of the past four years of climate change denial -- and the necessity of immediate climate action to confront the existential danger is now.

Earth Day 2021 will be recognized as a momentous day.

Now comes the reckoning, the challenge of reality, of matching action to words...

New Definitions of National... and Global Security

GreenPolicy360 & Strategic Demands / #StratDem

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/New_Definitions_of_National_Security

• https://strategicdemands.com/new-definitions-of-security

GreenPolicy360/StrategicDemands: The key to 21st century security is "strategic realism". Any full scientific assessment of security threats on the horizon is replete with environmental/global risks that are drawing daily into view. These risks are presenting a clear and present danger, in U.S. Department of Defense terms. A 'clear and present danger' has yet to be acknowledged by the US Department of Defense, or in the US military budget that approaches $1 trillion in annual spending. Other nations continue a race seeing security in terms of defense/military spending. This cannot be sustained. Forward planning with a new and more acutely aware vision of security is demanded now.

GreenPolicy360 and its associate Strategic Demands challenge prevailing views that are not focused as they must be on existential threats of our era. A new vision of security must drive the politics of our times. New definitions of national and global security must become highest priorities.

We specifically point at the US 'National Intelligence Program' and its annual threat assessment reports. We see a shift taking place in the intelligence community (IC) as it is now beginning to recognize and acknowledge environmental security as a crisis that is no longer distant. The climate crisis is real. Severe eco-impacts are being experienced by communities, national to local, as science is reporting with voluminous data and attendant warnings.

🌎 #ClimateCrisis Action

An intelligence shift must move climate and environmental impacts from 'irritants' to a core, central 'security consideration role'.

GreenPolicy360 and Strategic Demands continue to point the way toward these "New Definitions of Security" necessary for comprehensive, and sustainable security.

Annual Threat Assessment

Senate Intelligence Committee’s Worldwide Threats Hearing

Via the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS)

April 2021

• https://www.csis.org/analysis/intelligence-communitys-annual-threat-assessment-and-senate-intelligence-committees

This annual report of worldwide threats to the national security of the United States responds to Section 617 of the FY21 Intelligence Authorization Act (P.L. 116-260). This report reflects the collective insights of the Intelligence Community(IC), which is committed every day to providing the nuanced, independent, and unvarnished intelligence that policymakers, war fighters, and domestic law enforcement personnel need to protect American lives and America’s interests anywhere in the world.This assessment focuses on the most direct, serious threats to the United States during the next year. The order of the topics presented in this assessment does not necessarily indicate their relative importance or the magnitude of the threats in the view of the IC. All require a robust intelligence response, including those where a near-term focus may help head off greater threats in the future, such as climate change and environmental degradation.

What did Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines mean when she said the United States should “broaden our definition of national security?”

The Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) and following hearings devoted time to discuss the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. While the IC has long had in-house experts exploring the national security implications of health issues and environmental pressures, both are generally considered as irritants giving rise to core national security considerations like political instability or resource-based conflict rather than national security issues in and of themselves. (boldface added) Director Haines seems to be advocating for a more central role for issues like these in the IC’s work.

And this is the rub: the world is big and complex, there is more data to read than any human can read, and many of the issues are intertwined. This is what the IC means by “cascading” challenges—a global pandemic is not merely a public health issue—it also causes economic disruption that can lead to migration and political destabilization, and the indicators providing warning of these threats are not stealable secrets. Sorting the signal from the noise in a world with a lot of noise is the central challenge for the IC, and it will need transformative reform, including massive computing resources and artificial intelligence and machine learning assistance, to make sense of it.

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Avril Haines was sworn in as the Director of National Intelligence on January 21, 2021. She is the seventh Senate-confirmed DNI in our nation’s history and the first woman to lead the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Office of the Director of National Intelligence

• https://www.dni.gov/index.php/who-we-are/organizations

The DNI is the principal intelligence adviser to the U.S. president. The DNI determines and manages the National Intelligence Program (NIP) budget of more than $50 billion, the U.S. government’s total intelligence spending aside from military intelligence. The DNI is also tasked with integrating the efforts of the 17 elements of the Intelligence Community.

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Each of us can make a positive difference

Planet Citizens

Planet Citizens, Planet Scientists

Look at how thin our atmosphere is

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Look_at_how_thin_our_atmosphere_is

Look carefully, there, above us, a http://www.thinbluelayer.com, a *very* thin blue atmosphere enveloping and enabling life on Planet Earth.

On Earth Day let us reflect and recall our responsibility --- to protect life as we travel into the future together...

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