Posted to Energy June 03, 2022 by Alex Cornell du Houx

After 100 days of war in Ukraine, fighting is intensifying and one major factor that gives Russian President Vladimir Putin confidence to continue the war is record-setting oil and gas revenue. As long as there is a market for Russian oil and gas, Putin will have the resources to continue fighting with little hope for meaningful peace negotiations.

The reality is that this war has been going on for the last eight years. The Barack Obama administration made the mistake of not taking the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 seriously. And Europe made the mistake of actually increasing its dependence on Russian gas from 27 percent in 2013 to 38 percent before the current invasion.

Russian oil revenue is up 50 percent this year, according to the International Energy Agency. Gas exports have actually increased during the war. This gives Putin ammunition to fight Ukraine to the tune of more than $700 million a day with an expected $321 billion this year — an increase of more than a third from 2021.

I was on patrol with the Marine infantry in Iraq and we came across a line of cars, trucks and tractors as far as the eye could see. It was nearing dusk and through the desert dust it was hard to make out what they were waiting for. As we got closer it became apparent — oil.

The nightly curfew was approaching and our job was to disperse the crowd. However, people were steadfast and started to riot. They were willing to risk their lives because they were dependent on this single source of energy. Likewise, Putin’s war and autocratic plans are dependent on the Free World using a single source of energy. The late Sen. John McCain famously said, “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country.”

According to the IEA, in 2021 oil and gas made up 45 percent of Russia’s federal budget, with about 60 percent of exports going to Europe and 20 percent to China. Oil and gas exports have stabilized the Russian ruble. In fact, its sharp and sustained recovery made the ruble the world’s top-performing currency in March. Europe even capitulated to Putin’s demand to pay for oil and gas in rubles to avoid an energy crisis.

Yet Putin’s dependence on a single source of energy also gives us a tremendous opportunity to curtail his power and war in Ukraine. It also means the Free World has an opportunity to increase international security.

Despite the image Putin wants to convey, even before the expanded invasion, Russia was not an economic superpower, ranking 11th in the world. Its gross domestic product ranked above Brazil and was barely comparable to the economy of Texas. Its GDP per capita is 65th in the world. Without oil and gas revenue, the Russian economy will collapse.

The easy answer would be drilling and exporting more oil and gas. It helped make the United States an energy leader. However, it won’t solve this crisis. The industry is already sitting on thousands of unused permits, and investors are unwilling to increase U.S. production due to high profits and previous boom and bust cycles. It would also take six to nine months to increase U.S. production meaningfully. The six liquefied natural gas plants in the United States are already at capacity.

International production is purposefully being held at low pandemic levels by an agreement that is set to expire in September. Additionally, there is little capacity to increase production, as Saudi Arabia is producing 10.5 million barrels per day and has rarely tested sustained production levels above 11 million barrels per day.

The United Arab Emirates is the only other OPEC state that has spare capacity. OPEC is estimated to have less than 2 million barrels per day of spare capacity. Saudi Arabia has also signaled it will stand by Russia as a member of the OPEC+.

Europe also needs 500 billion cubic meters of gas, and 40 percent of that comes from Russia. Even shifting U.S. production from Asia adds only 15 billion cubic meters above the 22 billion cubic meters the U.S. provided last year. Additionally, even with Russian production projected to decline by 17 percent this year and Europe’s reduction of Russian gas to 26 percent, revenues have been stable due to high prices.

The only sustained solution is to add clean energy production to the energy mix, urgently and rapidly. While it takes years and billions of dollars to build a liquefied natural gas plant or pipeline, clean energy can be added much more rapidly to make a meaningful difference on the battlefield. The REPowerEU plan is to invest 210 billion euros by 2027 in clean energy, and Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands agreed to a 10-fold increase of wind power in the North Sea. The goal is to reduce Russian oil imports by 90 percent by the end of the year and be free of Russian gas by 2030.

To truly address the urgency of this challenge is to mobilize a wartime effort to produce clean energy at home and export it to Europe. President Biden can invoke the Defense Production Act to lead the world in clean energy solutions. This leverages $650 billion in federal procurement and creates a demand signal for rapid production. America is excellent at manufacturing when we have a mission. We created and led the world in vaccines using the DPA. During World War II we produced 300,000 airplanes.

More than 500 lawmakers, 50 of whom are also veterans, signed the Elected Officials to Protect America letter urging Congress and the president to enact a National Climate Emergency Plan that includes invoking the DPA. Veterans understand the urgency.

Distributed electricity such as local solar is much more resilient to natural disasters, cyberattacks and war. Heat pumps reduce the need for heating with gas. Offshore wind turbines can be producing electricity in 18 months — faster with DPA invoked. Municipal hydro can be added to city water systems in one to eight days, creating baseload energy. Green hydrogen can cut waste and create power.

We can lead the world in clean vehicle production. These are all solutions that exist now. The added benefit of using the DPA to increase energy production is resilience to Chinese economic and military dangers.

The Ukrainian people have shown their strong determination to defend freedom with valor and heartwarming acts. They are on the front lines defending the democratic world. When I was working with the Ukraine special forces and leadership to evacuate Afghan allies, the Ukrainians risked their lives to help us. They believed in helping those who stood for democratic values. Now they are in the fight for their lives and freedom. We must not let them down. Let’s mobilize to defend Ukraine and our planet.

About the Author

Alex Cornell du Houx is a former Maine state lawmaker, president of Elected Officials to Protect America, and political partner at the Truman National Security Project. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

By Josh Campbell and Meridith Edwards
– Updated 12:00 AM EDT, Mon March 28, 2022

When Russian forces first rolled across the border into Ukraine last month, Sayed and Masuma Hosseini were calm.

The former Afghan soldier and his wife, who had been living in Kyiv with two of their children since late 2021, had seen more wars than most will in a lifetime.

Forced to flee their homeland three separate times before due to conflict, they had received an unwelcome education in the complex nature of violence, and a sharpened sense of perceived versus real danger.

But the Hosseinis would soon find themselves refugees for yet a fourth time, rapidly packing only what they could carry, and setting off in what they prayed was the opposite direction of flying bombs and bullets.

‘Things will calm down’
At first, the Hosseinis expected Russia’s invasion to be brief — no more than a couple days.

“Either it will go to this side or that side,” said Masuma, describing her initial thinking. “Either Putin will take (the country) or Zelensky will take it. These two will reconcile among themselves and things will calm down.”

Rather than reconciliation, what followed was a brutal, if lumbering, advance by Vladimir Putin’s forces. In seeking to capture key Ukrainian cities, Russian troops shelled neighborhoods, killing countless innocent civilians in attacks the United States and its allies have described as war crimes.

Apart from the periodic air raid or police siren, Masuma said the city of Kyiv was relatively quiet at the start of the war.

Unable to speak Ukrainian, the family took its cues from locals living in their small apartment building. The sound of a toddler in the unit above, who would often run across the apartment, was a comforting noise. As long as the Hosseinis heard the riotous child through their ceiling, they knew their neighbors had not yet begun heading for the underground shelters.

But soon came the explosions, the fear, and a plea from their daughter in the United States to immediately leave the capital.

‘We felt like there was no hope’
This was not the first time the Hosseinis had found themselves fleeing Russian aggression.

In 1979, the Soviet military invaded Afghanistan in a war that lasted a decade. The campaign would ultimately result in nearly a million Afghan deaths and the loss of 15,000 Russian troops.

As Soviet forces besieged their country, Sayed and Musama fled to nearby Iran.

“When it became calm, we returned to Afghanistan,” said Masuma. “Then, when we were there for a few years, the Taliban (came to power) for the first time and fought, and we became refugees again and went to Iran.”

They remained in Iran until US forces launched operation Enduring Freedom after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. With the brutal Taliban regime toppled, the Hosseinis felt it was safe to return home, hoping to never again have to assume the title of refugee.

That hope was fleeting. Nearly 20 years after the start of the war, US President Joe Biden announced US forces would be pulling out of Afghanistan, indicating the prolonged and intractable conflict no longer aligned with American priorities.

By mid-August, the Taliban had seized control of every major city in the country and took over the presidential palace in Kabul.

As the US military finalized its chaotic withdrawal, the Hosseini family feared that Sayed’s role in the Afghan army and their daughter Fatema’s job as a journalist would put the family in the crosshairs of the Taliban.

Fatema made contact with US Navy Reserve Lieutenant Alex Cornell du Houx, who had been working in his personal capacity to help rescue Afghans trying to leave.

Cornell du Houx worked alongside a contact in the Ukrainian military to help secure approval for a special humanitarian flight mission that ultimately brought the Hosseinis to safety in Kyiv.

“There were times when we felt like there was no hope of getting our allies through the gate, then I would get a message from the Ukrainians saying they found a path and guided them to safety — including Fatema’s family,” said Cornell du Houx. “We were supporting thousands of Afghan Allies and by far the majority who made it to safety could breathe a sigh of relief due to the bravery and skill of our Ukraine friends.”

In less than six-month’s time, those same Ukrainian forces would be pleading with the world for help of their own.

‘You can survive this one, too’
Nearly 5,000 miles west of Kyiv in a neighborhood outside Washington, DC, Fatema Hosseini, now a college student, was into her second night of no sleep, repeatedly refilling her coffee mug to help stay awake as she tried to get her family out of war-torn Ukraine.

“I was trying to calm them down by saying: ‘You survived so many wars. You can survive this one, too,'” said Fatema. “But deep in my heart I was literally shivering.”

Communicating by text and video with her 18-year-old brother, Abdulfatl, she implored them to try to get to one of the trains that would take refugees from Kyiv to the western city of Lviv. But the family had little money to pay for tickets, and Abdulfatl said their mother, Masuma, was too sick to travel.

Through the kindness of strangers in their apartment building, the family gathered enough money to make the trip.

But, the train waiting to depart for Lviv was completely packed. “You have to get in,” Fatema told Masuma. “She cried. She said, ‘I can’t,” fearful her 2-year-old daughter, Mobina, would be crushed in the crowd of refugees jammed into the rail car.

Using social media to communicate with strangers in Ukraine, Fatema tried to find other methods of travel for her family, including by bus, but was told there was shooting taking place at the local stop.

While Fatema was busy trying to find a driver, Abdulfatl called and said he had managed to find space on another train bound for a different western Ukrainian city and they were on their way.

Elated and thoroughly exhausted, six time zones away from her family, Fatema passed out. When she awoke, she placed an emotional call to her younger brother, still on the train.

“You did a very great job,” she said, fighting back tears.

‘People there are beautiful’
Fatema’s next goal was to try to find her family a car for the four-hour drive from the train station to the Polish border.

Once again, using social media, she reached out to various strangers for help, including a retired US soldier who put Fatema in touch with an aid group. Volunteers sent a car for the Hosseinis, who were taken to a shelter and provided food.

Actually getting across the Polish border was the final hurdle for the thoroughly fatigued family.

When they first arrived in Kyiv from Afghanistan, the Ukrainian government had taken their passports and provided them with temporary refugee documents. The Hosseinis were told they could retrieve their passports if they ever decided to leave Kyiv for a third country, but this was before Ukraine found itself under attack. In their race to flee the besieged capital, the family couldn’t get their official documents from the immigration agency.

Their saving grace was a journalist Fatema met through online contacts, who drove the Hosseinis to the border and helped them pass through into Poland, far from the Russian invaders.

Reflecting on the many good Samaritans responsible for the safety of her family makes Fatema emotional. Most, if not all, are Ukrainians she will never get to meet and thank in person.

“I wish I could be from Ukraine,” says Fatema. “I wish that could be my homeland. People there are beautiful. They’re kind, and they don’t hesitate to approach you and help you.”

‘Do not get attached to one place’
Sayed, Masuma, Abdulfatl and little Mobina Hosseini are presently in Warsaw, staying at the home of yet another new friend Fatema made online. Their goal is now to get to Canada — a nation that has received personal praise from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for welcoming refugees with open arms — and to live with their eldest daughter.

There is one final challenge: the expensive price of airfare. With little money and few possessions, they do not know how they will be able to make the journey.

Much like the millions of other refugees fleeing Putin’s war, the fate of the Hosseinis is unclear. They are safe, Masuma says, and she looks forward to the day the family no longer has to flee conflict, but she remains more prayerful than hopeful.

“I pray that no one, no other country, no person on the face of the earth, becomes a refugee…that all live in peace” she says.

Asked what her message is to others who may face war, Masuma is practical rather than philosophical.

“When a person becomes a refugee, they miss everything,” she says. “Make a simple life for yourself. Do not buy too many clothes. Do not get attached to one place, because when you immigrate again, you will have to leave everything behind.”

Alex Cornell du Houx, Opinion contributor – Published 13 December 2021

“I need help.”

This was the message I received from a female journalist named Fatema Hosseini at the gate to the airport who was evading tear gas, bullets and Taliban beatings. Moments later, I received a message from an interpreter whom I had worked with in Afghanistan, with a video of the conditions at the gate. It was grim.

It made me think of my time in the Marine infantry as a 0351 infantry assault man. I had been shot at, evaded a number of explosions and practiced being tear-gassed. That was in Fallujah. She was facing similar conditions on what was supposed to be a path to safety.

The path to guiding her and Afghan allies through the Hamid Karzai International Airport gates started when I joined the Marines 17 years ago.

As Marines, we would sometimes do crazy things like run a marathon in full gear without practice. Fast-forward to 2018. I found myself in Afghanistan running around the base with fellow Navy veteran Jessica Serafin and a number of courageous Afghan women who were training for triathlons and competitive races. The sun was close to setting over the city and the air was slightly crisp, yet thick with pollution, and at times it felt like I was breathing molasses. Later that night, I was hunched over an air purifier coughing myself to sleep.

‘More stressful than being in combat’
I kept running with them because I was incredibly inspired by how, as role models for other Afghan women, they were risking their lives and health. I was now an officer in the Navy Reserve. Any hardships I felt on this deployment were unbelievably minimal compared with the dangers they faced simply for the freedom to run. Their dedication and bravery are matched by few.

With the Taliban takeover, sadly these dangers exponentially increase. Serafin told me some of the runners were beaten, their shoes taken away and graffiti sprayed on their houses. The race to get them and our Afghan allies to safety was on. Frankly, it was more stressful than being in combat. 

Serafin helped create Operation Sacred Promise, which focuses on Afghan former military allies. I helped create Evacuating Vocal Afghan Citizens (EVAC), which offers support for journalists and female activists.  

Fortunately, we also had help from the Ukraine Special Forces (SOF) and Iryna Andrukh, who led the charge to put together a number of daring rescue missions. Andrukh left the safety of Ukraine and went to Afghanistan to personally oversee the operation. The Ukrainians’ willingness to help, even with the ever-present Russian danger on their doorstep, is commendable. For this, I am eternally grateful. 

Hosseini’s words, “I need help,” echoed in my mind. Finally, I got a notification from her that “the flag has risen.” After some initial confusion, I realized she had seen a glimpse of the Ukraine flag through her tear-gassed eyes, and I was able to guide her toward the SOF and safety. 

A few days later, and after some gut-wrenching turns of events, the female athletes and journalists’ families were safely awaiting their flight to Ukraine – including Hosseini’s family. Andrukh became one of only 320 Ukrainians to receive their medal for courage during special operations – and the only woman to receive it.

‘The best of America and our allies’

It was inspiring to see so many veterans, active duty, reserve, and other government officials use their personal time to come together regardless of politics to bring our allies to safety for days on end – with almost no sleep.

I applaud President Joe Biden for having the courage to extract us from further conflict and evacuate over 120,000 people in such a short amount of time in adverse conditions. Yes, mistakes were made, and we should acknowledge what did not work. This is why after-action reports will be prepared. However, turning this crisis into a political blame game is a disservice to the tireless efforts in protecting our Afghan allies and plays into adverse narratives about our nation. The focus is best served by bringing everyone to their new homes and ensuring adequate resources once they arrive in America. 

Alex Cornell du Houx is a Marine combat veteran, a former Maine state lawmaker, president of Elected Officials to Protect America (EOPA), and political partner at the Truman National Security Project. The views presented are those of the author and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense.

Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY
– Published 5:00 AM EDT Sep. 30, 2021 Updated 3:28 PM EDT Sep. 30, 2021

Lt. Alex Cornell du Houx has dodged a sniper’s aim, rocket fire and a roadside bomb. In some ways, the former U.S. combat Marine’s latest mission, an entirely volunteer one, has been his most challenging: helping at-risk Afghans escape the Taliban.

For the past six weeks, Cornell du Houx, now a Navy public affairs officer, has been part of a definitely-not-ragtag volunteer rescue force that swiftly mobilized amid the U.S. withdrawal.

After the Taliban captured Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, on Aug. 15, U.S. and coalition aircraft combined to evacuate more than 123,000 civilians in the two weeks that followed, according to Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command.

But many more Afghans – either through a lack of a visa, insufficient contacts or bad luck – were effectively marooned in newly hostile territory.

They were, or remain, in peril from reprisals from the new Taliban government because of links to U.S. and NATO forces, foreign aid groups and overseas media. They championed democracy, civil society, education, culture.

Motivated partly by concern at the way the U.S. withdrawal left so many behind – women’s rights activists, translators, journalists, politicians, Afghan National Army pilots, judges and female athletes – a volunteer coalition formed.

“It was the least we could do. We worked and, in many cases, served alongside these people for years,” said Cornell du Houx, 38, who combines work as a U.S. Navy public affairs officer with a civilian job running a nonprofit organization called Elected Officials to Protect America to address security issues related to climate change. He conducted the rescue operations as a volunteer in his civilian capacity.

U.S. military personnel, Washington political veterans, intelligence community members, humanitarian aid workers, even an investment banker from Florida – pooled resources, contacts and knowledge to get Afghans evacuated on military and civilian flights to the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

In fact, for about a week in mid-August, Cornell du Houx’s newly founded group, EVAC (Evacuating Vocal Afghan Citizens), and other groups with names like Digital Dunkirk, Team America and Operation Eagle set up an ad hoc “command center” in the Peacock Lounge conference room of the Willard InterContinental Hotel in Washington.

The various units worked together, but also separately, on a dizzying array of logistical challenges ranging from chartering planes to securing landing rights in places such as Albania, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates. They vetted local bus drivers to take people to Kabul’s international airport. They collected information on how to prioritize evacuees, knowing all the while these decisions could spell life or death and that many people were equally deserving of evacuation.

They also raised money, joined calls with U.S. administration officials and dealt with the panic and fear of Afghans who were trying to escape the Taliban. In some cases, volunteers provided step-by-step instructions to evacuees, advising them on which of the airport’s gates were open, what security precautions to take. They gave guidance about visas and paperwork.

Cornell du Houx had gone through a similar process in helping Afghan journalist Fatema Hosseini, who worked for USA TODAY, to escape with the aid of Ukraine’s special forces – and, a week later, her family. In both cases, he stayed up through the night to relay intelligence, coordinate with U.S. and Ukrainian commandoes on the ground in Kabul, and provide real-time tactical and emotional support to Hosseini and others as they navigated gunfire, tear gas and dangerous overcrowding around Kabul’s airport.

“The whole thing was a rollercoaster ride, very tense,” said Cornell du Houx. “I am trained to know what to do in combat situations but this was something else.”

Iryna Andrukh, a colonel in Ukraine’s military who alongside Cornell du Houx helped orchestrate Hosseini’s rescue, then deployed to Kabul as part of a daring mission to save her family and dozens more, said of her country: “We always save those who are in trouble and ask for help.” As part of that operation, Andrukh helped clear a path for buses to enter Kabul airport. This involved venturing into Taliban-held territory.

Backstory: How a Navy officer, a Ukrainian colonel and a USA TODAY reporter helped an Afghan journalist escape the Taliban

That success inspired EVAC, which Cornell du Houx estimates has now evacuated more than 500 people. It still has a database of about 5,000 names of people seeking a way out.

Scott Mann, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces officer who led a similar volunteer group named Task Force Pineapple, described his team’s efforts to help Afghans in a video message to supporters last month as an “underground railroad.”

The command center in Washington was partly funded by Zach Van Meter, a private-equity investor from Naples, Florida. Van Meter felt compelled to get involved after a friend and business associate of his, a former U.S. Army commando whom Van Meter in an interview would identify only as “Sean,” had reached out and said he knew of about 3,500 children, many of them orphans, who were stranded in Kabul.

“He asked me if I could help save lives. In that context I don’t think anybody could really say no to that. I didn’t really know what it entailed. I don’t think anybody really did,” said Van Meter, who leveraged his business contacts in the Middle East to assist the assembled volunteers.

Van Meter said his collaboration with the volunteers has altered his worldview.

“I’ve met so many people that don’t live like I live, which was, you know, money, capitalism, sort of just push, push,” he said. “They live to save lives. They live to improve humanity. And so I now realize that part of my journey for the rest of my life is going to try to be more purposeful.”

A former U.S. Marine who had specialized in Special Forces reconnaissance was part of a 12-man American volunteer team that deployed to the Kabul airport Aug. 20. The former Marine, who declined to be publicly identified because he did not want to compromise continuing operations, said his group worked with U.S. military and high-ranking contacts in the United Arab Emirates to provide humanitarian assistance to an estimated 12,000 at-risk Afghans who eventually were evacuated to Abu Dhabi.

USA TODAY reviewed a series of communications involving the former Marine’s sources and his association with the evacuation effort, which appeared to support his account.

“We knew all too well the likelihood that America would abandon these people, and we were called into action to do the right thing … to take care of those who had helped us,” the former U.S. Marine said.

In all, about 3,000 volunteers from Alabama to Oregon helped Afghans escape in the days after Kabul’s fall to the Taliban, according to Heather Nauert, a former spokesperson for the U.S. State Department who has been working with volunteers and veterans organizations to ensure safe passage out of Afghanistan for families connected to the U.S. military.

“In many cases it was just suburban dads or moms like me making dinner in the kitchen for their kids, then jumping into action to see what we can do to help,” said Nauert, who described herself as someone who could “help shepherd cases” by filling out paperwork for people to get on flight manifests, calling senators’ offices and flagging particular cases to senior officials at the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense.

The Biden administration has come under criticism for a chaotic withdrawal that left many American allies and civilians vulnerable.

Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat who chairs a congressional committee on intelligence and special operations, acknowledged that the “pullout could have been handled better.”

A former U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, Gallego spent several sleepless nights in mid-August contacting four-star generals and pressuring the State Department to get people to the airport in Kabul. He assisted volunteers with intelligence about road conditions and explored options to take evacuees to third countries, such as Qatar.

But Gallego said the evacuation represented “the best of America, whether it was the government or whether it was our our civilian side working together (with the government).”

The White House approved a plan for the Biden administration to formalize work with the network of volunteers, according to several volunteers familiar with the matter. This new public-private partnership followed a recommendation to the White House by the U.S.’s top military officer, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.

Gallego is not directly involved with that effort. However, he said he expected it will be “a good way to get organized, help break through bureaucracy, and do a good effort to get people out of out of the country.”

Cornell du Houx is not waiting around for that to happen.

Shortly before this story published, he sent a WhatsApp message to USA TODAY:

“You can add to the count,” he wrote. “We just got 70 kids and 30 adults to safety.”

View the full story at:

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/world/2021/09/30/afghanistan-evacuation-fatema-hosseini-escape-taliban-checkpoints-kabul-airport/5822817001/

Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY – Published Oct 29, 2021

As the Earth warms, strokes and heart disease increase, as does depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Crops fail due to persistent drought, causing farmers in conflict zones to turn to terrorism to make a living. The inequities in communities of color in the U.S. worsen as “bad air days” disproportionately impact Black and Latino populations.

The climate change risks we face are writ large in the form of supersized and more frequent wildfires, heat waves, floods, hurricanes, and depleted ecosystems. But as humans release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, all this activity is also having profound yet more subtle and harder to measure impacts on public health, national security, social justice, economic growth, worker productivity and a range of other everyday concerns big and small, scientists and experts say.

“I’m in Texas where we have a lot of communities that host oil and gas facilities. These refineries and petrochemical plants are in places where people are invariably poor, where they don’t get the jobs or income, they don’t get the tax benefits. They get polluted. They get poverty. They get sick,” said Robert Bullard, a professor of environmentalism and sociology at Texas Southern University, in Houston.

“Climate change is probably the single most important environmental justice issue of our time because it will accelerate and exacerbate existing inequalities in terms of access to good housing, health care, food, water and safe environments, and the U.S. in many ways is a microcosm of what’s happening globally,” Bullard said.

Climate change:’First and foremost’ a health crisis, new report finds

COP26 goals: Are they reachable?
This global picture will be discussed in Glasgow, Scotland, Oct. 31 to Nov. 12 at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26). It will be attended by world leaders, business chiefs, representatives from fossil fuel companies, climate activists and various other groups and concerned citizens.

The meeting comes six years after the Paris Climate Accords, when 196 countries pledged to start reducing their greenhouse gas emissions through a framework known as Nationally Determined Contributions. But few – including the U.S. – have done so in a way that is compatible with the Paris agreement’s goal to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels, according to Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific analysis website that tracks government action connected to climate change.

Bullard will attend COP26 as part of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, established by President Joe Biden to strengthen environmental justice monitoring and enforcement in low-income and communities of color.

Biden, who will be in Glasgow Nov. 1-2, is trying to push through Congress at least $500 billion in tax credits, grants and loans to fight climate change domestically as part of a roughly $2 trillion government infrastructure package. For now, Biden’s energy-transition plan is being blocked by a congressional stalemate.

Without that deal the U.S.’s ability to meet its emissions-reduction goals looks far out of reach. It remains unclear whether China’s President Xi Jinping will even attend COP26, an absence that does not bode well given that China is the largest carbon dioxide emitter, followed by the U.S., according to the International Energy Agency.

The world already has warmed by more than 1 degree Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, according to a report released in August by United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Alok Sharma, a British lawmaker and COP26’s president, said he wants the Glasgow conference to reach agreement on several key targets, including:

limiting the increase in global temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, but preferably to 1.5 degrees
phasing out the use of “unabated” coal
earmarking $100 billion annually for developing countries to reduce their fossil fuel emissions
requiring all new car sales to have zero emissions within the next two decades
reducing emissions from methane
halting all deforestation by the end of the decade

Climate change erases security, stability
“If we look at the scale of the forest fires across the Northern Hemisphere this year, or the magnitude of just how extreme the heat wave was in the Pacific Northwest, or if we look at the rainfall events in Germany over the summer – these rates of change exceeded what the climate models told us would happen with our current levels of greenhouse gases,” said Radley Horton, a climate scientist at Columbia University.

Yet not all climate impacts are immediately visible or are at least more difficult to comprehensively track. Horton said major coastal flooding events have obvious short-term impacts on displacement within one’s own country. But as climate change impacts intensify, and food and livelihood security worsen in one area, temporary displacements can lead to permanent and longer-distance ones, especially if there are other factors at play such as poor living conditions, few resources or threats from open conflict.

“Climate hazards lead to instability, which encourages people to migrate,” he said.

The impact of a changing climate on national security is not represented formally on the agenda in Glasgow but will be talked about on the sidelines of the event by participants such as Lt. Alex du Houx Cornell, a U.S. Navy reservist who in his civilian life is the president of Elected Officials to Protect America. EOPA, a non-profit group, brings veterans and lawmakers together to look for solutions to climate threats to public health, the economy and national security.

“When I was deployed to Afghanistan (in 2018) during the Battle of Farah the Taliban actually tweeted out that they were taking the city for the water,” said du Houx Cornell, who noted that since 1948 there have been 37 incidents of acute conflict over water.

“Climate change is a threat multiplier for our national security,” he said.

Ronald Keys, a retired U.S. Air Force commander who was responsible for organizing, training, equipping and maintaining combat-ready forces for rapid deployment, said that climate change is leading to less resilient American military bases, making it harder for U.S. forces to execute missions and resulting in more interrupted training days.

“If the issue is heat, which causes drought, that affects whether you can go out and do live fire drills. If we’re talking about rising sea levels, you can build a seawall but at some point you can’t build that seawall any higher,” he said.

The White House recently announced that the U.S. intelligence community has completed its first ever National Intelligence Estimate on climate change. It concluded that our warming planet “will increasingly exacerbate a number of risks to U.S. national security interests,” including increased geopolitical tensions as countries argue over who should be doing what, and how quickly, to transition to clean energy.

Climate change:The US spy community issues its first-ever National Intelligence Estimate on climate change – and it’s not pretty

Climate change damaging public health and pocketbooks
One way climate change is having a deleterious impact is on public heath. A scientific paper co-authored by Horton in 2017 found that incidences of stroke and heart disease increased in places where mean temperatures had risen over decades. There are also correlations with higher temperatures and poorer birth weights and outcomes. A recent global study led by researchers at the University of Bath, in England, found that 75% of young people surveyed suffered psychological damage because they were sad, afraid and anxious about what the future could hold for them as they and their offspring stand to bear the full burden of living on a planet with rising temperatures.

Another is on the American economy and financial landscape.

“At the institutional level, there’s massive amounts of money moving into climate solutions, things like wind farms and solar and decarbonization strategies,” said David Callaway, a former USA TODAY editor-in-chief who now runs Callaway Climate Insights, a newsletter that analyzes what corporations, investment managers and the business community are doing to mitigate climate risks. Still, Callaway said that with oil prices at record levels many clean energy stocks have actually underperformed benchmark stock indexes recently, partly because they were overvalued in the first place.

“If you’re waiting for the world to grow a collective conscience and invest in clean energy you’re going to be waiting a long time. But if you’re waiting for technology and business entrepreneurs to make clean and sustainable investments because they are more profitable than dirty ones then it’s going to come around a lot sooner,” he said.

Horton said that because climate change is happening faster than anticipated, with that comes impacts that are being felt sooner, too.

“The cliche I use is that two prize fighters are in the late rounds, they are sizing each other up, they’re exhausted, there’s going to be a knockout from an uppercut,” he said. “We just don’t know yet whether it’s going to come from climate change impact tipping points, which would be catastrophic, or a positive solutions story. But one of those things is going to happen this century.”