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Michael T. Klare
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All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change Paperback – November 17, 2020

by Michael T. Klare (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 109 ratings
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All Hell Breaking Loose is an eye-opening examination of climate change from the perspective of the U.S. military.

The Pentagon, unsentimental and politically conservative, might not seem likely to be worried about climate change―still linked, for many people, with polar bears and coral reefs. Yet of all the major institutions in American society, none take climate change as seriously as the U.S. military. Both as participants in climate-triggered conflicts abroad, and as first responders to hurricanes and other disasters on American soil, the armed services are already confronting the impacts of global warming. The military now regards climate change as one of the top threats to American national security―and is busy developing strategies to cope with it.

Drawing on previously obscure reports and government documents, renowned security expert Michael T. Klare shows that the U.S. military sees the climate threat as imperiling the country on several fronts at once. Droughts and food shortages are stoking conflicts in ethnically divided nations, with “climate refugees” producing worldwide havoc. Pandemics and other humanitarian disasters will increasingly require extensive military involvement. The melting Arctic is creating new seaways to defend. And rising seas threaten American cities and military bases themselves.

While others still debate the causes of global warming, the Pentagon is intensely focused on its effects. Its response makes it clear that where it counts, the immense impact of climate change is not in doubt.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    304 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Picador
  4. Publication date
    November 17, 2020
  5. Dimensions
    5.87 x 0.79 x 8.85 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    125077294X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1250772947
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A well-researched and expertly written analysis... Its unique and important perspective makes All Hell Breaking Loose a standout among climate change titles.”
―Booklist (starred review)

“With an impressively global breadth of knowledge, Michael Klare shows us the various ways in which the Pentagon understands all the dimensions of climate change―and is planning to cope with it. After all, our armed forces are, among other things, a worldwide apparatus for intelligence-gathering and strategic planning. On this greatest issue of our times, we ignore their findings at our peril.”
―Adam Hochschild, author of Lessons from a Dark Time and King Leopold’s Ghost

“After a lifetime of critical reporting on our war machine, Michael Klare has the contacts and insights to make this new book very useful indeed: it shows that inside the Pentagon people have begun to take climate change quite seriously, and helps us think about what might mean going forward. Fascinating reporting!”
―Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

“Michael Klare has done a masterful job of capturing key points in the U.S. military’s pragmatic approach to climate change. As he shows, the military is building resilience in its own training, testing, and ability to respond, and is clear-eyed about warming’s effects in catalyzing chaos and crises abroad that it may be called upon to respond to.”
―General Ron Keys, United States Air Force (retired), chairman of the CNA Military Advisory Board

“Michael Klare does an exemplary job of recounting not only how military leaders view climate change differently than politicians on either end of the political spectrum, but why they do so. Seamlessly weaving together a narrative of Pentagon reports and compelling testimony, he shows that the military sees climate change as a threat to its capacity to defend the nation.”
―John Conger, former Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)

About the Author

Michael T. Klare is the author of more than fifteen books, including Resource Wars and Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. A contributor to Current History, Foreign Affairs, and the Los Angeles Times, he is the defense correspondent for The Nation and the director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; Reprint edition (November 17, 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 125077294X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250772947
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.87 x 0.79 x 8.85 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 109 ratings

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Michael T. Klare

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4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
109 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Karen Mohindra
5.0 out of 5 stars Hobbes' State of Nature is Here, and Climate Change's Effects are Accelerating
Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2019
Verified Purchase
After a few chapters, I visited my personal reference library to re-read Hobbes' description of humans living without the structure of government. Professor Klare describes environmental catastrophes abroad and in the United States with the ensuing breakdown of order. It reads like a dystopia but it is not fiction--rather a meticulously researched academic description. This book will improve the way you read the news as many political events in the Middle East are caused by the effects of climate change.

The subtitle's reference to the Pentagon does not mean that non-Americans have little reason to read it. Professor Klare stated at a Virginia author presentation "There is no U.N. force"; no other nation possesses the resources and personnel to save people and infrastructure when the furious storms, floods and droughts strike.

There is a list of books published every year that should be read by every person who considers themselves to be educated and All Hell Breaking Loose is one of them. Reading a review or precis will not suffice.
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Bob Sheak
4.0 out of 5 stars The US military is not going to save us or itself from the climate crisis
Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2019
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Michael T. Klare’s new book, All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change, is based on impressive in-depth research. One of central points of the book is that the US military is ignoring Trump’s policies that demand that all federal agencies disregard the climate crisis and do what they can to advance policies that favor fossil fuel interests and development, the major sources of the climate crisis.

We should bear in mind that the DoD’s acknowledgement of the climate crisis is recent. Klare traces the Pentagon’s awakening concern with global warming to the 2007 publication of by the Pentagon funded CNA Corporation. Naomi Oreskes points out in an article on Common Dreams (Nov. 11) that “Scientists have been seriously investigating the subject of human-made climate change since the late 1950s and political leaders have been discussing it for nearly as long.”

A central part of the book is organized around "the new ladder of escalation," ” a DoD concept that captures climate-related challenges facing the US military, challenges that are expected to require large and rising military resources. This ladder of escalation includes: (1) humanitarian disasters (climate disasters, civil disorder, and US military relief operations) , (2) states on the brink of failing or already failing states, where “humanitarian aid needs to be combined with counterinsurgency missions, (3) “global shock waves” spanning multiple countries(food shortages, energy crises, pandemics, and mass migrations), (4) great power clashes stemming from international competition and potential military conflict rooted in the melting of Kthe arctic and associated opportunities for trade routes and the extraction of oil and minerals, and (5) “the homeland at risk” (increasing domestic climate disasters and the military’s strategic predicament in coping with them).

DoD officials are taking steps to address these challenges and, Klare writes they are doing more than other institutional sectors of American society to reduce its own carbon footprint. For example, the Navy has begun using a blend of petroleum and liquefied beef fat to fuel some of its ships (p. 205). The Marine Corps has introduced energy efficiency and renewable energy equipment for combat troops in Iraq, beginning in 2006 - “a project to swap gas-guzzling power generators at forward operating bases with energy-efficient replacements” fueled by “a mix of solar and wind power to augment diesel energy” (212). The US Army is testing its transportation requirements “advanced vehicle power and technology including fuel cells, hybrid systems, battery technologies and alternative fuels” (215). As a result of these innovations, the DoD could report in its Fiscal Year 2016 Operational Energy Annual Report that the DoD’s “total petroleum consumption by the DoD’s operating forces declined by nearly 20 percent over the preceding five-year period from approximately 112 million barrels in FY 2011 to 86 million in FY 2016.” Domestically, base commanders are working to reduce their dependence on the electricity grid.

Yes, applaud that the DoD acknowledges the reality of climate change and is taking steps to address it. Another takeaway from Klare's book is that the military is not going to save us or itself from the increasingly cataclysmic and accelerating climate crises that scientists and others are documenting. Indeed, in the absence of radical change, US military forces will go on adding to the problem.

The US military’s main objectives, certainly over the past 60+ years, have been to protect the national interest, and this is an “interest” defined by the President, often with the bipartisan support of the US Congress and the Pentagon itself. The overriding objective have been to protect the foreign economic interests of US corporations, to protect corporate supply chains, to keep the resources of “developing countries” available to corporations, to support countries that are viewed as allies, and to counter any forces that seek to challenge these goals, whether they be groups identified as “terrorists,” extreme Islamists, or nation states such as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran. And, like other institutions in the US capitalist system, the military and military contractors want to keep growing. This is so although the US already spends more on the military than any other country in the world, far more than Russia and China. The US Congress is about to buttress the DoD base budget by over $20 billion bringing the total to over $750 billion for FY2020. Overall, military-related expenditures exceed $1 trillion. The US has huge military force levels, including more than two million personnel, 11 nuclear aircraft carriers, and the most advanced military aircraft. And, despite its humanitarian efforts, the US has been continuously at war since late 2001 and have combat or counterterror operations in more than 80 countries. Neta C. Crawford for Brown University’s “Costs of War” writes, “Although the Pentagon has, in recent years, increasingly emphasized what it calls energy security – energy resilience and conservation – it is still a significant consumer of fossil fuel energy. Indeed, the DOD is the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum and correspondingly, the single largest producer of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world.”

The outcomes of America’s “defense” policies are well known. The US armed forces, under orders, have been the spearhead in waging unnecessary, destructive, and very costly wars that have caused widespread civilian casualties, exacerbated ethnic and religious divisions, undermined governing institutions, crippled economies, deepened poverty, contributed to the conditions that have produced an unprecedented number of displaced people, and created out of all of this the conditions that have destabilized governments and given rise to extremist movements.
While “green” initiatives by the DoD should be welcome, what is needed is a progressive national government in the US that finds ways to reduce the military budget and to work with other countries diplomatically, while at the same time addressing the climate crisis comprehensively through a Green New Deal, rejoining and giving new life to the Paris Climate Agreement, and supporting financial and technological efforts in the Global South to develop sustainable energy systems. Presently, such changes seem remote.

Klare is aware of the anti-democratic thrust of US foreign policy, the intensifying resource wars, and the endless US wars, but the focus of this book , based on laudable research and analysis, is narrowly focused on the military's "perspective" of climate change. It is an important contribution. But if the reader fails to understand the larger context, she/he may be misled into believing that the Military is part of the solution rather than a major contributor to the problem
37 people found this helpful
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S Markel
5.0 out of 5 stars Quite clever, and incredibly prescient
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2020
Verified Purchase
Before even starting this book I was struck by how clever the premise was; what better way to debunk the anti-science right than to demonstrate that the US military, a right-leaning but pragmatic organization, is taking climate change seriously and taking steps to adapt to it (and possibly even mitigate it's impact). Once I started reading I was amazed at how prescient the author was. He foresees the global pandemic we currently find ourselves in, and identifies many of the problems we're currently experiencing as resulting from our ever-increasing reliance on global supply chains. I found myself jumping back to the copyright page to confirm that this book was published in 2019.. NOT 2020! I learned a lot about how the military is preparing for the altered world we'll likely soon find ourselves in.
2 people found this helpful
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jeromecoffern
5.0 out of 5 stars Duty, Honor, Country above Politics
Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2019
Verified Purchase
This excellent book draws back the political veil and shows us that the Department of Defense and every military branch are not only taking climate change very seriously but are taking action right now to prepare for the difficulties that are coming, and in fact have already begun. It disturbs me that they have to do it so discretely so as to not anger the deniers in leadership positions. As I was reading this book I kept wondering why so many of the difficulties and hazards across the globe that are related to climate change that the military has been involved in and are monitoring and preparing to grapple with have not been in news. These are interesting and important events. Michael Klare thank for writing this book and giving us this information.
4 people found this helpful
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Chuck M
5.0 out of 5 stars A very good book to read even if you believe and understand that Global warming is a real threat
Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2020
Verified Purchase
Very well researched and loaded with facts on how the US military and DOD are prepared for global warming and the effects of it with regard to responding to aid countries that are effected by global arming events and our military still being ready for its primary mission's of protecting our national security.
2 people found this helpful
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