Recently, the President of the United States spoke at the graduation of the U. S. Coast Guard Academy. There he proclaimed that one of the greatest threats to national security was … climate change.
A Washington Post article stated, “President Obama warned Wednesday that climate change is a growing and ‘serious threat’ to national security, tying severe weather to the rise of the extremist group Boko Haram in Nigeria and the civil war in Syria.
“In his latest bid to turn up political pressure on Republicans over the environment, Obama challenged 218 newly commissioned officers at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy to take the threats of climate as seriously as they would a cutter in peril on the seas.”
“You don’t sit back; you take steps to protect your ship,” Obama said. “Anything less is a dereliction of duty. The same is true for climate change.”
Alluding to usual robust GOP support for U.S. troops, Obama said: “Politicians who say they care about military readiness ought to care about this as well.”
“Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security,” he told the graduates in their dress white uniforms at the campus football stadium, “and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. And so we need to act — and we need to act now.”
All the while, the following is occurring:
· The Director of the FBI claims that the presence of ISIS is active in all 50 states.
· North Korea is working on a missile that can deliver a nuke to the United States.
· Iran continues to attempt to develop nuclear capability.
· ISIS continues to expand and murder at a level that would make the Nazis proud.
· The southern border continues to be a potential entry point for illegal drugs and terrorists bent on destruction.
· Within five years the Chinese will have more warships than the United States.
Russia has flexed its expansionist muscle and, finding little resistance, is likely to do so again.
Assuming that climate change is real (no one doubts that climates change — there is great disagreement, however, over whether climate change is man-made), it is still baffling that the president, at the graduation of military officers, would proclaim it as a serious threat to national security when other serious situations are so obvious.
The President of the United States is the Commander-in Chief of the most powerful military force on the planet. And, yet, climate change is what he chooses to declare as a serious threat to national security? And just what does he expect Coast Guard officers to actually do about climate change?
All the while, the world is filled with real and present dangers that really would like to destroy western civilization. It is no wonder that out allies don’t trust us and our enemies don’t fear us. The blood of weakness is in the water and the global sharks are circling.
[David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, Sharpsburg, GA (www.ctkcec.org). He is the bishop of the Mid-South Diocese which consists of Georgia and Tennessee (www.midsouthdiocese.org) and the Associate Endorser for the Department of the Armed Forces, U. S. Military Chaplains, ICCEC. He may contacted at frepps@ctkcec.org.]
