National Security Risks Are Rising With Sea Levels

I spent much of my life in the U.S. Navy, including nearly 11 years on the deep ocean day-to-day, out of sight of land. This really drove home the fact that oceans cover 70 percent of the earth’s surface — all the world’s land would fit comfortably within the Pacific. Oceans produce much of the oxygen we breathe and a great deal of the protein we consume. They enable more than 90 percent of international trade and provide increasing amounts of oil and natural gas. Yet now, because of climate change, the national security imperatives of the waters are rising as surely as the sea levels around the world.

Last week, two worrisome international statements demonstrated how interconnected environmental challenges have become. The first was a United Nations report warning that more than one million plant and animal species (out of eight million on earth) are facing extinction in the coming decades. Within the report are dire comments about the health of the oceans: rapidly declining fishing stocks (one third of all fishing zones are depleting rapidly); great loss of marine mammals; polar ice caps diminishing; heavy metals, toxic sludge and other pollutants accumulating at the rate of 400 million tons per year; increase in plastic pollution by a factor of 10 since 1980; hundreds of “dead zones” where no marine life can exist; and of course rising sea levels. I addressed much of this in my 2017 book, “Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans,” and things have only worsened since. The report is a truly global effort produced by nearly 150 scientific experts from 50 countries.