The US security establishment views climate change as real and a dangerous threat to national security, but Canada takes a very different view, according to a secret intelligence memo prepared by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
The memo, stamped “Canadian eyes only,” repeatedly casts doubt on the causes of climate change — the burning of fossil fuels — and its potential threat.
The 44-page intelligence assessment of Canada’s environmental protest movement was prepared for the government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who is expected to roll out new anti-terror legislation.
In the memo, obtained by Greenpeace, the RCMP repeatedly departs from the conclusions of an overwhelming majority of scientists — and the majority of elected leaders in the international arena — that climate change is a growing threat to global security.
Instead, the memo on the “anti-Canada petroleum movement” presents continued expansion of oil and gas production as an inevitability, and repeatedly casts doubt on the causes and consequences of climate change.
It mentions the “perceived environmental threat from the continued use of fossil fuels.” It suggests that those concerned with the consequences of climate change occupy the political fringe.
“In their literature, representatives of the movement claim that climate change is now the most serious global environmental threat and that climate change is a direct cause of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions which, reportedly, are directly linked to the continued use of fossil fuels,” the memo says.
The language and tone of the RCMP memo are strikingly at odds with perceptions of climate change within the security establishment of the US and with the current findings of the world’s best scientists. The CIA and Pentagon both view climate change as a serious threat to international order, and factor sea-level rise, drought, and extreme weather into their future security planning.
The Globe and Mail, which was the first to report on the memo, said the tone of the RCMP memo reflects the hostility of the Harper government toward environmental activists.
“Violent anti-petroleum extremists will continue to engage in criminal activity to promote their anti-petroleum ideology,” the memo says.
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