Napolitano Says DHS to Begin Battling Climate Change as Homeland Security Issue

CNSNews ^ | December 17, 2010 | J. Brady Howell

[jazusamo]

Homeland Security Secretary Janet
Napolitano (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)

 

(CNSNews.com) --  At an all-day White House conference on "environmental justice," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that her department is creating a new task force to battle the effects of climate change on domestic security operations.

Speaking at the first White House Forum on Environmental Justice on Thursday, Napolitano discussed the initial findings of the department’s recently created "Climate Change and Adaptation Task Force."

Napolitano explained that the task force was charged with “identifying and assessing the impact that climate change could have on the missions and operations of the Department of Homeland Security.”

According to the former Arizona governor, the task force would address specific questions, including:

“How will FEMA work with state and local partners to plan for increased flooding or wildfire or hurricane activity that is more serious than we’ve seen before? What assistance can the Coast Guard bring to bear to assist remote villages in, for example, Alaska which already have been negatively affected by changes up in the Arctic?”

The findings from the Homeland Security Department (DHS) also asked: “(H)ow can we focus on how climate change is going to affect our rural citizenry including those who live along our boarders both northern and southern?”

Napolitano did not elaborate on the new task force and the Department of Homeland Security has yet to respond to requests by CNSNews.com for additional information on the task force.

The conference did not define “environmental justice,” and the only reference to the task force that can be found is on the DHS Web site. The June 2010 Department of Homeland Security Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan states “climate change has the potential to accelerate and intensify extreme weather events which threaten the nation’s sustainability and security.”

This plan also noted: “Many USCG [Coast Guard] and Customs and Border Protection facilities, by their mission, are located in the coastal zone which will be adversely impacted by sea level rise.  Costs will increase for protecting existing facilities from the impacts of sea level rise and some facilities might have to be abandoned in the longer term.”

The all day White House Forum on Environmental Justice also included talks by White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

[jazusamo]

Well said! I might add that every time a stunt like this is pulled by those parasitic followers of Zer0 it wakes up some more of the proud Americans by pushing them ever closer to the edge. Hopefully the major part of the cancer will be taken care of at the polls in 2012.

[mo]

These f’n idiots are clueless. The only thing they’re smart about is managing to remain on the US Taxpayer Payroll.

[mo]

BTW...if you refuse to assist the US Gov’mt in its war on global warming...you are now a terrorist.

[Antoninus]

The more I read, the more I think we need to completely defund the feds.

[Arrowhead1952]

The conference did not define “environmental justice,”

OK, I have to ask. What is her DU screen name??

[marron]

The idea of a “department of homeland security” was to coordinate the various overlapping agencies and get them all on the same page.

What good does it do to coordinate them if the coordinator is an Obamist?

[jazusamo]

I have to agree. What freedoms they haven’t taken from us already they’re working on and funding programs like this is insane.

[NonValueAdded]

HEARINGS!

[NonValueAdded]

Keep her and the other secretaries so tied up in oversight hearings that they have to ask for office space in the Rayburn building.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Unreal.

[jazusamo]

Absolutely...Keep those turkeys testifying before House Committees so they can’t screw things up worse than they already have.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

That could happen...see this thread:

Warming skeptic gets key Science post – may do “mean things” ( climate skeptic Jim Sensenbrenner )

[BenLurkin]

The Hussein Regime: Anything to hurt America.

[TigersEye]

One more bloated bureaucracy that doesn’t do what it was chartered to do and is ever-expanding into anything and everything.

[Chode]

you miserable fat lesbian you... I cannot believe how incredibly stupid that is. I mean Dehydrated stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid, so stupid it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. It is trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know.

[jazusamo]

Agree and bookmark. :-)

[sport]

I am a terrorists them.

[redhead]

"Napolitano Says DHS to Begin Battling Climate Change as Homeland Security Issue"

Hmmm... must be running out of destructive things to do.

[SouthTexas]

This is some of the BS I was referring to on the other thread.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

BS it is for sure.