Late on Tuesday’s edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, panelist and Brookings Institution fellow Susan Hennessey offered a jaw-dropping assessment that “the single biggest national security threat is climate change” as it’s been the reason behind many of the recent global tensions.
Host Chris Matthews asked his panel of national security experts to tell him something they didn’t know about what keeps them up at night and when he arrived Hennessey, she uncorked an answer that would surly make Bernie Sanders proud.
“Look, for all the Trump administration's sort of focus on refugees, the single biggest national security threat is climate change. We've seen that the ways in which climate change has either sparked conflicts or has made existing conflicts worse again and again. This has been a major DoD priority,” Hennessey hyped.
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Showing off the kind of person he is, Matthews retorted not with a quibble or a serious follow-up, but this awkward, pathetic questions: “What'd you think of the weather two weeks ago...What do you mean? Do you think it has to do with the weather we've been having?”
Hennessey tried to reply that a small sample size has not “sparked conflict,” but she couldn’t go further before a dithering Matthews interrupted with a friend question: “Well, how about the hottest year on record or years in a row now — the hottest years on record?”
The former NSA counsel used this softball to argue that global inflection points have to do with climate change in terms of battles “for resources and we're seeing more and more displaced people” which has caused “spillover effects with really dramatic security consequences.”
“I think you're right about the Horrn of Africa and Somalia and places like that are just horrible what people are driven to,” Matthews concluded.
To recap, the biggest national security threat isn’t cyber warfare, Iran, the migration crisis, North Korea, or radical Islamic terrorism, but climate change? Yeah, sure.
Here’s the relevant portion of the transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on March 7:
MSNBC’s Hardball
March 7, 2017
7:54 p.m. Eastern
SUSAN HENNESSEY: Look, for all the Trump administration's sort of focus on refugees, the single biggest national security threat is climate change. We've seen that the ways in which climate change has either sparked conflicts or has made existing conflicts worse again and again. This has been a major DoD priority.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: What'd you think of the weather two weeks ago?
HENNESSEY [LAUGHS]: Right, so we’ve seen this —
MATTHEWS: What do you mean? Do you think it has to do with the weather we've been having?
HENNESSEY: I don't think that that necessarily has sparked conflict — of the national security —
MATTHEWS: Well, how about the hottest year on record or years in a row now — the hottest years on record?
HENNESSEY: Right, so again and again, we're seeing a more intense sort of conflict for resources and we're seeing more and more displaced people. That causes — that has spillover effects with really dramatic security consequences.
MATTHEWS: I think you're right about the Horrn of Africa and Somalia and places like that are just horrible what people are driven to.
