Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart / James Delingpole; According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, “NATO must help to curb climate change for our security today and for the security of future generations.”, so “NATO must do more to fully understand and integrate climate change into our all aspects of our work”.
NATO must combat climate change
Op-ed article by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
27 Sep. 2020
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I have been passionate about climate change all of my life. My first job in government was as Deputy Environment Minister, and I had the privilege of serving as UN Special Envoy on Climate Change. Now, as NATO Secretary General, it is my responsibility to address the threat climate change poses to our shared security.
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our time. As the planet heats up, our weather becomes wilder, warmer, windier and wetter, putting communities under pressure as sources of food, fresh water and energy are threatened.
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Climate change threatens our security. So NATO must do more to fully understand and integrate climate change into our all aspects of our work, from our military planning to how we exercise and train our armed forces.
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It is essential that we adapt to this new reality. That means better combat gear, vehicles and infrastructure. And it means explicitly including climate change in NATO’s work to improve the resilience of Allies and partners, something that we have been doing for decades in areas like infrastructure.
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NATO and its member countries also have a responsibility to help reduce climate change by producing fewer emissions without compromising our core tasks.
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Climate change is making the world more dangerous. NATO’s task is to preserve peace and keep us safe. So to fulfil our main responsibility, NATO must help to curb climate change for our security today and for the security of future generations.
Read more: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_178334.htm
Under “WHAT IS NATO?” on the NATO website, NATO provides the following description of their mission.
Security in our daily lives is key to our well-being. NATO’s purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.
POLITICAL – NATO promotes democratic values and enables members to consult and cooperate on defence and security-related issues to solve problems, build trust and, in the long run, prevent conflict.
MILITARY – NATO is committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes. If diplomatic efforts fail, it has the military power to undertake crisis-management operations. These are carried out under the collective defence clause of NATO’s founding treaty – Article 5 of the Washington Treaty or under a United Nations mandate, alone or in cooperation with other countries and international organisations.
Read more: https://www.nato.int/nato-welcome/index.html
In my opinion, the radical climate change comments of Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg really calls into question whether NATO is still genuinely focussed on their stated political and military objectives, and whether there is any point to ongoing US membership of NATO.
One of those democratic values NATO is supposed to be promoting is the right of member state voters to democratically elect a government which opposes radical climate action.
You cannot fill a leaky bucket. If NATO is frittering away all their attention and resources fighting climate hobgoblins and undermining member states which oppose radical climate action, instead of sticking to their stated political and military objectives of guaranteeing freedom and security, promoting democratic values and resolving disputes, then NATO is no longer fit for purpose.
Don’t over dress when it’s hot. If it’s cold outside, button up.
If NATO GOTTA FIX IT then NATO GOTTA FUND IT out of their own budget
We should be out of NATO. This just confirms that what Trump said in 2015 was right. The globalism that NATO perpetuates is a threat to liberty in America.
Do we really still need NATO at all? Other than babysitting Europeans so that they do not start killing each other again, why is this organization necessary?
This “mission” by NATO S.G is the poker player’s ‘tell’ that the purpose for which the org. was created is no longer “sustainable”. All government institutions fight like hell to stay alive after their purpose evaporates. Their survival behavior even creates unnecessary tensions. Russia isn’t going to go to war with Estonia!! Cheesh!
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1379/1090/1600/calvinpoker.gif
Excellent!!
I wouldn’t assign NATO to “combat” Boy Scouts of America Troop 457 – where I was a marksman, 50 years ago.
Non-military people running NATO, being political, as anyone who has their job in government. So what is the surprise that he doesn’t know what NATO is for? Maybe its a way to get more money to but new “climate ready” equipment?
The Expulsive muses;
“Maybe its a way to get more money to but new “climate ready” equipment?”
That thought did cross my mind. Can’t get funding for the All Weather Interceptors you really want? Start telling the political types that the airforce needs to be Climate Ready instead.
There is after all a strong historical precedent for doing that. The Royal Navy back in the day were told they were not allowed to build new aircraft carriers. So they proposed some new Through Deck Cruisers instead.
What is a Through Deck you might ask? Well, in simple terms it is a large flat area on a ship which you use to operate fixed and rotary wing aircraft. Cough.
There are many other examples. The US Army operated ‘Combat Cars’ during the 1930s as well as tanks to get around government rules concerning which branches of the army could or couldn’t operate tanks. The French did very similar things in the same period to hide which vehicles went to the infantry or the cavalry. It’s all in the naming.
However this guy? Hard to say. His WikiPee page (and if it is on WikiPee it MUST be true) suggests that as Norway Defence Minister he managed to steadily increase defence spending, but in looking at other parts of his career there is strong examples of being 100% political and saying whatever he things his audience wants to hear at the time.
It is much easier for NATO to tackle imaginary and non-existent threats like ‘Climate Change’, than to do something about real threats to the World like China, the East Asian Seas and Taiwan. It is cost-effective too.
Well we know what NATO does in a real fight we saw it at Sarajevo … stand there and watch it unfold, while arguing in six different languages about who should make a decision.
Annexation of Crimea, anyone?
The Ukraine was then and is not now part of NATO. There was no NATO Article 5 to invoke with Crimea.
Educate yourself a bit.
You meant “was NOT then” I think?
It’s not “the Ukraine.” It’s just “Ukraine,” as it has been since 1991.
Educate yourself a bit indeed.
Nicholas, you are correct about easier for NATO to tackle imaginary…threats, however, since NATO stands for “North Atlantic Treaty Organization” they do not confront China directly. OK, they don’t confront anybody directly. President Trump was angry at discovering that member nations were not paying a fair share of their defense and demanded they ante up, which most have. My guess is that if President Trump is re-elected NATO will not be fighting climate change, jousting with windmills, etc, or the USA withdraws.
Cost-effective fighting “climate”? We are currently spending Trillions with no success whatsoever.
And “Who is this guy”? A classic socialist, publicly opposing nato when he was young. Now he has infiltrated the organization and killing it from within.
Jens Stoltenberg is only another ex prime minister from the norwegian labour party (Arbeiderpartiet) who used his position to get a good job abroad. He just follows in the footsteps of Gro Harlem Brundtland and Torbjørn Jagland. Hehe, one funny point these days: Jagland resigned from the post as prime minister when he did not get 36,9% votes at the election in 1993. Today the polls indicate the Arbeiderpartiet has only 18.4% of the votes. The AP has been on a steady decline in popularity, even when they now have the luxury of beeing in opposition. But he is just being Politically Correkt in this climate matter. IMHO this must be a good application for resigning his job at NATO.
Isn’t NATO supposed to worry about armed aggression against member states in all kinds of weather ? Why would whatever small change there is in 30 years of weather even be a topic of discussion ?
Given NATO’s failures to protect people or even do it’s military job properly in recent events the general to fight for a concept that has no clear objectives. So does that tell us about all we need to know about the generals military intelligence.
Given the US pays the largest part of NATO budget at 22% to other NATO nations 2%, I think if I was a US taxpayer I would be asking for the general to be removed as unfit to command.
I don’t understand the US picking up the tab for these morons either. If I were the US, I take my money and go home and simply announce that if they start screwing each other around again as in World War II, the US will nuke the capital city of the offending nation (s). About now, I’d be mentioning this to Turkey about Nagorno-Karabakh which they are busy threatening because of the Armenian Christians. Turkey wasn’t content with knocking off about a million Armenians after the First World War in a pretty specific act of genocide that they have gotten away with ever since. They apparently now want to have another go.
The UK pulls above its weight as well. But looking at the crisis in the Balkans some years back, I think it was the Dutch troops in NATO that stood by and allowed a massacre of Bosnian Muslims to occur by the Serbs. I still don’t understand how The commanders of those troops were not charged with war crimes.Standing by and letting something happen is as much a crime as participating.
As For climate change as a responsibility of NATO, don’t make me laugh. What are they going to do, shoot it?
The Dutch troops that stood by while the Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered were under United Nations Peacekeeping Command, not NATO, which also tells everyone all there is to know about the corrupt United Nations, who developed it’s IPCC environmental plan and is perpetuating the hoax of climate change. This was then put to the world by Obama at the Paris Climate Accords, this man who
is the personification of the American Marxist and who is pulling the strings behind the socialist left in America. If Trump isn’t re-elected, the western world will be on it’s way to ruin.
Jens Stoltenberg never was a General. He was an unremarkable private soldier when serving his one year in the military. In Norway many people think he got this NATO job because he paid a few hundred millions of taxpayers money into the Clinton Foundation.
Time for those electric fighter planes to rolled out.
Climate friendly fighter blimps? 🙂
solar powered gliders like the Gossamer Condor firing unicorn fart-pumped lasers.
NATO lost its mojo over a decade ago. It is struggling to find relevance in a changing world. Its own membership has internal problems, just look at the never ending aggression between Turkey and Greece as one example.
Trojan war anyone, “Greece” and “Turkey” have been fighting each other for most all of recorded history.
Time to dissolve NATO and bring our troops home from most of Europe. Move what little forces we wish to keep abroad into countries like who support and respect the US.
Require the previous host countries to repay the costs for the infrastructure left behind.
That goes for South Korea, Japan and others, although I think bases in places like Okinawa should be declared sovereign US territory, at least in those areas captured during WWII. Of course only where manned basses are still necessary considering the ongoing development of AI, unmanned equipment and hypersonic weapons.
The reality is still that the US debt is the result of the expense incurred to fight WWII, with compounded interest. If the US required European and Asian nations to repay their debt for their liberation, the US could retire it’s national debt, and there would no longer be any money for those nations to waste on “Global Heating”.
Well they’re not funding the military portion and everyone knows it, so it must be time to find a new
griftmission.Wasn’t there some British General last year asserting the British Military will be fossil fuel free in the near future? NATO got the bug too?
The problem is that when the Industrial Military Complex start offering up environmental solutions the usual bunch of latte drinkers mock.
Back 10 or so years ago a company – BAE Systems from memory but open to correction – offered up ‘Environmentally Friendly’ bullets for small arms. The very sound logic is that most small arms use bullets with a very significant amount of lead, and during live fire training nearly all of that ends up in the back stops of the firing range.
Replace lead in the bullet with something else and you no longer have a lead problem to worry about.
Logical right?
Nope. Our Cultural Elite guffed and laughed and said how can something designed to kill ever be ‘environmentally friendly’?
Then again, pretty sure that BAE deals in billion dollar projects, while The Guardian openly askes its readers for donations. Think we can work out exactly how much sleep BAE lost over the media’s rejection.
Can’t say for sure but it wouldn’t surprise me. Our military top-brass is becoming increasingly infiltrated with wokeness, whose primary concerns revolve around ‘diversity’, ‘equal opportunities’ and political correctness. They are going the same way as the police.
Mr. Stoltenberg, 60 years old, will be the second longest-serving head of NATO by the time his term expires on Sept. 30, 2022. His term was extended in March 2019.
If NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg can use the issue to get NATO member nations to pony-up more to Euros to their defense via this climate non-problem, then good on him.
But when Putin’s Little Green Men (LGM) start invading NATO members Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, (and may be eastern Poland) next February-March then we’ll see then what Mr Stoltenberg’s idea of a real threat to NATO really is.
NATO and the UN are in the same class …. outside of their failed missions so they need to get on board with something, anything, that could redeem their existence. So they make things up to appear relevant.
The article by Stolenberg is virtue-signalling gibberish from beginning to end. Everywhere you look these days there are official bodies spouting the same fact-free rubbish. The world is in the grip of another mass delusion; it’s as if The Emperor’s New Clothes had never been written, or at least simply forgotten about.
Here in the UK it is impossible to escape from with the BBC relentlessly churning out the same message on radio, TV and its website; it is all data-free, unchallenged and unbalanced content. Even the pretence of scientific and journalistic enquiry has been abandoned; manmade global warming is the new global religion, self-harm and flagellation is the order of the day and the world is taught to shun and cancel those heretics who have the temerity to ask simple questions, follow the scientific method or offer longer-term historical, geological and cosmological analyses of the issue.
It’s quite a dichotomy; Man has never been so advanced in his technical and scientific ability but everywhere we see the evidence of human stupidity.
+100
“wilder, warmer, windier and wetter”
Alliteration is the term given to the repetition of the same sound or letter at the beginning of words in a phrase. For example: “Peter picked a peck of pickled peppers” repeats the letter p.
Really Ralph? Regular Readers Reject Ridiculous Rightwing Rhetoric. Climate Change Causes Conventional Counters Considerable Challenges. Cruel Critique Combination ummm… ummm… Carrot Cantilever Canada.
Bother – was doing so well for a while too 😀
Politicized Pandemic Policy: Pessimistic Prediction Prohibitions Provoke Public Pushback
I have been passionate about climate change all of my life.
Somehow reminds me of Talleyrand’s alleged description of the Bourbon return to power after Napoleon:
They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
There was a time when traitors were stood up against a wall. Now they are appointed to top command.
NATO fighting weather – Don Quixote fighting windmills\.
“Its a party let’s all join in!”
Right! We will find an example of climate change and bomb it to pieces! That will teach it.
(from his WikiPee page… so it must be true!)
“In 2006, Stoltenberg stated that “Norway condemns Israel’s actions against Palestinians. Such collective punishment is totally unacceptable.””
and…
“In June 2016, Stoltenberg said it was essential to step up cooperation with Israel, since Israel had been an active alliance partner for 20 years.”
Strikes me that Jans says what needs to be said at the time. Political Class.
NATO was succesfull in fighting the danger of the coming ice age in the 70s. So go for it!
As Bolton and Sylvie Kauffmann, the former chief editor of Le Monde, clearly said this week at his book launch in France, President Trump was intent on leaving NATO.
The swamp reacted of course, redefining itself to take on China, a NATO of the pacific, and “climate”.
Meanwhile more NATO soldiers turn up in Poland right at Russia’s doorstep.
https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2020/10/07/pour-ceux-qui-voient-en-joe-biden-le-retour-d-une-valeur-sure-en-politique-etrangere-le-reveil-risque-d-etre-difficile_6055036_3232.html
Seems to me Stoltenberg is all used up: Edgar Allan Poe
https://www.eapoe.org/works/mabbott/tom2t032.htm
THE MAN THAT WAS USED UP.
A TALE OF THE LATE BUGABOO AND KICKAPOO CAMPAIGN.
Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux, et fondez-vous en eau!
La moitié de ma vie a mis l’ autre au tombeau. CORNEILLE
Stigmates of past historically confirmed prove that ideological dogmas are often used as pretext to wars.
As many European countries, we feel uncomfortable with the idea that one day someone might attempt to “climatically educate” Russia and try to shut down it’s coal, oil and gas industries by force.
Should this happen, Germany, like many other, will be vitrified due to the many foreign and NATO military bases that we “host”.
So NATO are fighting climate change whilst Russia invest in Arctic vehicles, mobile nuclear power stations and nuclear powered icebreakers. Not to mention missiles that travel at 9000km/h. NATO should introduce solar powered vehicles and wind powered missiles as a means for establishing better combat gear, vehicles and infrastructure, Putin must be in total fear of his European superior neighbours.
-Wow, wasn’t that a MIG of sorts on afterburner up there at 10 o’clock ?
-Probably even another type we’re not supposed to know of.
-Shall we call a traffic report ?
-Negative, if they don’t know it’s here, then we should ignore it as well.
-Erm, ah, ok, roger that.
-Topic closed, we still have time for the CVR to loop over before we’re back home.
-Roger that too. Won’t happen again.
Maybe time to Progress NATO to EUTO – European Union Travesty Organization. And take their weapons away.
Why does NATO still exist?
Massacre in Srebrenica.
Says it all really, – watching and taking notes.
In the 80-ties as a youthpoliticalpartyleader Jens was against NATO. As a prime minister he commited war crimes bombing Libya. For that he was rewarded the secretary job in NATO he was aganist. Follow power and money will follow.
Meanwhile Putin is about ready to deploy hypersonic missiles on land and sea after trials on two test ranges. I’m sure those two F-16s in Denmark can stop them.
Stoltenberg: As the planet heats up, our weather becomes wilder, warmer, windier and wetter…..
Hence there are more forest fires and bush fires. That wet wood sure does burn.
NATO needs to start with the basics . . . to wit, VERY HEAVY emphasis on the “to fully understand” part.
That is, engage brain before initiating any other actions.
Changing the mission, maybe a new NATO in Eastern Europe would be more appropriate.
If Russia attacks it won’t be with green vehicles, it will be with gasoline powered vehicles.
It would be hilarious to comprise the new NATO out of all old Warsaw Pact nations.
It looks like Europe has two armies, one is NATO, and then there is the EU Army.
I wonder if the EU Army is underfunded like NATO? It sounds like they would be competing for the same resources.
Tom Abbot – How many divisions does the EU army have, I wonder? – to paraphrase Stalin.
Ironically, the modern knights will quixotically defend windmills to the last.
I think it is time to disband NATO, they clearly have lsot the plot and run out of small nations to bomb. How about reigning in Turkey?
Hey, NATO, maybe you could fight the Covid-19 Chinese Flu while you are at it. I think maybe fighting the Chinese is beyond you if this is all you can come up with to make yourself relavent.
Per Jens
“NATO and its member countries also have a responsibility to help reduce climate change by producing fewer emissions without compromising our core tasks.”
If Jens, or anyone, that spends taxpayer money can reduce their emissions without compromising their core tasks then they they should. Reducing emissions (and maintaining or improving core tasks) would then be synonymous
with being more efficient.
But, I believe Jens is lying. He doesn’t care about compromising core tasks. He can’t even define his core tasks. He would compromise the hell out of the NATO core tasks if it made him feel a little better about his worthless life.
He can’t define the member country responsibilities … no NATO country has a responsibility that involves changing their lifestyles to help Jens with his pre-pubescent emotional issues with his older sister & his guilt about his younger sister.
He is a lying POS politician, and that is all.
His ancestors should have been left in
Stolty will present next year the Spring collection of fashionable NATO contraptions:
Solar bombers & wind powered tanks…
Waging war never was as much fun than when it is green.
Message endorsed by the Greta Thunberg Foundation /sarc
Is NATO still a thing?