Recently US Sen­a­tors Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., intro­duced a bill to create a National Intel­li­gence Esti­mate on the national secu­rity impli­ca­tions of global warm­ing. Salon.com has the full story:

• Will global warm­ing threaten national secu­rity?

This is an inter­est­ing move to attempt to reframe the debate about global warm­ing. Instead of its tra­di­tional place in envi­ron­men­tal realm (read: tree-​hugging hippie issue), we can see it now in terms of a secu­rity issue (read: soccer mom issue).

“For years, too many of us have viewed global warm­ing as simply an envi­ron­men­tal or eco­nomic issue,” [Durbin] said in intro­duc­ing the new bill at a Senate hear­ing. “We now need to con­sider it as a secu­rity concern.” Durbin char­ac­ter­ized cli­mate change con­se­quences as “a clear and present danger to the United States” and “a poten­tial threat mul­ti­plier for insta­bil­ity around the world.”

Per­haps this will finally get some more of the offi­cials in our gov­ern­ment on board with the issue.

On a side note, this bill is a very inter­est­ing move for Sen. Chuck Hagel, as Salon.com points out.

Hagel, a pos­si­ble con­tender for the GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, led the effort to block U.S. par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Kyoto treaty and con­tin­ues to staunchly oppose manda­tory restric­tions on green­house gases, but he has been a leader among mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans in moving to address cli­mate change in other, non­reg­u­la­tory ways. “Sen. Durbin and I differ on policy ini­tia­tives designed to reduce the impact of cli­mate change,” Hagel said at the hear­ing. “We do agree, how­ever, on the need to assess poten­tial impacts of the chang­ing cli­mate on U.S. national secu­rity interests.”

Maybe he can sway other gov­ern­ment offi­cials that have his­tor­i­cally been against envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns to think again.