The GOP Senator In Charge of Homeland Security Disagrees With The Pentagon On Climate Change

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, says he disagrees with the Pentagon’s assessment that climate change is a national security concern.

The Pentagon released a report in October 2014 that assessed the national security implications of climate change. “Politics or ideology must not get in the way of sound planning,” wrote former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in the forward to the report. “Our armed forces must prepare for a future with a wide spectrum of possible threats, weighing risks and probabilities to ensure that we will continue to keep our country secure.”

But Johnson said at an event in Sherwood, Wisconsin, on Nay 9 that he did not concur with the Pentagon’s analysis.

“I disagree with that assessment,” Johnson tells a questioner at the event. “We’re sitting here in Wisconsin. Twenty-some thousand years ago this was covered by about 5,000 feet of glaciers.”

“I do not deny climate change,” he continues. “The climate has always been changing.” He goes on to say that he thinks the United States “shouldn’t spend a dime addressing it because our limited resources are spent better elsewhere.”

Despite Johnson’s take on the issue, there has been growing concern in the national security community about the threats of climate change, including sea level rise and migration caused by droughts or food shortages.

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