STRATEGIC

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70 Strategic Choices for a Turbulent World: In Pursuit of Security and Opportunity Figure 3.3 Global Atmospheric Green House Gas Concentration Carbon dioxide concentration (parts per million) 400 350 300 250 200 150 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 Thousands of years ago SOURCE: Dobbins et al., 2015, Figure 6.1, based on data from Andrew Freedman, “The Last Time CO2 Was This High, Humans Didn’t Exist,” Climate Central, May 3, 2013. NOTE: Greenhouse gas concentrations are higher than they have been in nearly a million years and are rising faster than they have in the entirety of human civilization. RAND RR1631-3.3 Present Start of industrial revolution First towns (Jericho) First cave paintings U.S. public opinion on climate change has shifted dramatically, 71 but many Americans and some political leaders have been significantly more skeptical about climate change than other publics. 72 There is no domestic political consensus about how much, if anything, the United 71 “Global Warming,” CBS News/New York Times Poll, November 18–22, 2015, p. 2. Out of 1,030 surveyed, the percentage of those saying global warming is causing an impact now rose from 35 percent in 2001 to 50 percent in 2015, while those saying it will have an effect in the future fell from 41 percent in 2001 to 25 percent in 2015. The percentage who said climate change would have no serious impact rose from 17 percent to 19 percent, while 1 percent said global warming did not exist at all. A 2016 Gallup survey found 64 percent said they worried a “great deal” or a “fair amount” about climate change, the highest level in eight years. “U.S. Concern About Global Warming at Eight-Year High,” Gallup, web page, March 16, 2016. 72 The publics in the United States and the Middle East generally see the climate change issue as less serious, compared with those in Latin America, Africa, and Europe. See “Spring 2015 Global Attitudes Survey,” Pew Research Center, web page, Washington, D.C., June 23, 2015, questions 32, 41, and 42. Nevertheless, 66 percent of Americans surveyed by Gallup at the time of the 2015 Paris UN conference on climate change supported the United States joining an international treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions, while only 27 percent said the United States should not join. “Global Warming,” 2015.
Is the World Falling Apart (And How Would We Know)? 71 States should spend to mitigate climate change, and President-elect Trump has vowed to cancel billions in UN climate change spending, 73 causing friction with U.S. allies. 74 Achieving consensus will be difficult because the costs would fall more heavily on some parts of the country and economy—for example, those regions whose economies are tied to coal—than on others. Consensus will also be complicated by multiple great unknowns: the costs of decarbonizing the world economy—that is, of reducing or eliminating net human greenhouse gas emissions; the extent of the damage that will occur if climate change is not controlled; and the timing both of climate change itself and of the human activities to halt it or adapt. This vast range of uncertainty stems both from the novelty of the science—for millions of years, the Earth has not been as warm as it may become, so any estimate of how the climate will behave is an extrapolation of the previously unobserved—and the difficulty of predicting how different societies and biological systems will respond to the changes. For instance, the potential for technological innovation is unknown—how fast will entrepreneurs lower the cost of solar power and electric cars? How effective will various government policies aimed at incentivizing decarbonization turn out to be? How quickly will people in different countries change their lifestyles? The three strategic concepts outlined in Part II of this report in effect lay different bets not only on the severity of the changes in climate that will occur but also on how different countries will react. Each of these bets carries downside risks; indeed, for one or more of these possible bets, the outcome could be catastrophic. Thus, hedging strategies will be a necessity under any path. As a strategic problem, climate change poses serious national security challenges under some sets of assumptions, because many of the areas projected to be hardest-hit by climate change are also the countries that tend to be poorest, least stable, and receiving billions in U.S. 73 Trump vowed to “use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure.” Donald J. Trump, “Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter,” web page, November 10, 2016. 74 Nina Chestney and Alister Doyle, “France, U.N. Tell Trump Action on Climate Change Unstoppable,” Reuters, November 15, 2016.
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STRATEGIC RETHINK STRATEGIC CHOICES
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Preface This is the sixth and final
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Preface v The RAND Strategic Rethin
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viii Strategic Choices for a Turbul
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Contents Preface...................
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Contents xiii Middle East..........
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Summary For more than seven decades
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Summary xix deal with because of it
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Summary xxi Familiarity does not ne
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Summary xxiii Whatever else is on t
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Summary xxv of richest Americans, i
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Summary xxvii reexamination arises
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Summary xxix Dwight Eisenhower—wh
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Summary xxxi of ISIS, the migration
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Acknowledgments RAND Corporation Pr
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CHAPTER ONE Introduction What is Am
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Introduction 3 that some allies hav
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Introduction 5 of distrust of the g
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Introduction 7 live with. Therefore
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Introduction 9 Bruce Jones points o
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Introduction 11 force decision make
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Introduction 13 United States for l
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CHAPTER TWO From Triumph to Stalema
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Page 109 and 110: CHAPTER FOUR Leveraging U.S. Streng
Page 111 and 112: Leveraging U.S. Strengths, Dealing
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Part Two Strategic Choices
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CHAPTER EIGHT Option II: “The Ind
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Option II: “The Indispensable Nat
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CHAPTER NINE Option III: “Agile A
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Option III: “Agile America”: Ad
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CODA The Challenge of Leadership: A
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The Challenge of Leadership: Aligni
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STRATEGIC

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