Aaron Bailey is a former Army Captain who served as an Operations Officer with the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan.

Early this morning, as my fellow veterans and I braved the Scandinavian winter to attend the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, I felt a camaraderie that reminded me of my days serving in the military. Just as in my Army career, I am honored to stand alongside dedicated men and women who are committed to bringing stability and security to disaffected populations. While the Copenhagen conference is bristling with thousands of people – from scientists and clean energy advocates to policy experts and world leaders – the veterans working with Operation Free are adding a much-needed voice to the discussions about climate disruption. Although everyone here is concerned about the potentially disastrous effects to the Earth that are resulting from our increasing carbon emissions, most conference attendees are not aware of the equally adverse impacts of a changing climate on international security.

As I speak with conference participants and media outlets covering the events here in Copenhagen, the first question I’m asked is “why are international military forces concerned about climate change?” Of course, most of the attendees here are not military experts, but they do understand the following logic: First, there is near-universal agreement in the scientific community that our growing reliance on fossil fuels contributes to an increasing amount of carbon emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere. As more nations join the global economy and develop their own industries, the world is adding carbon emissions to the environment at a pace unparalleled in world history. These emissions – and the increased pollution that jeopardizes our air and water – are also responsible for some of the climate change we are already seeing around the world. Our reliance on dirty fossil fuels – if left unchecked – will increase the rate of global climate disruption and usher in more instability in some of the most impoverished nations in the world. The resulting volatility will threaten not only the immediate population, but also those international aid organizations that will be called upon to provide humanitarian assistance. As history has shown, far too frequently these same humanitarian operations often require a peacekeeping force or military response as well, as regional warlords battle for control of scarce resources.

As a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, one of my most vivid memories is of visiting a refugee camp – a place so deprived of basic necessities that residents often fought over access to resources like food and water. This is one of the reasons that veterans from Operation Free add a valuable voice to the topic of climate disruption: we’ve seen first hand how scarce resources lead to destabilized populations. With the potential for droughts in some areas and flooding in other areas, we know that the fallout will include increased famine, disease, and mass migrations. Just as I witnessed during my deployment to Afghanistan, areas with few resources and unstable populations are fertile recruiting grounds for terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. As we have witnessed in the past decade, these groups will stop at nothing to advance their extremist ideologies, and unstable and impoverished regions provide a safe-haven for terrorist groups to enlist and train new members. The United States Department of Defense, State Department, and Central Intelligence Agency are also greatly concerned the undesirable conditions caused by climate change, and they have developed task forces to examine the problem and develop strategies to provide diplomatic, and if necessary, a military response.

The global instability that will be caused by climate change is a serious threat, but thankfully we have the power to prevent these conditions if we act now and focus on utilizing cleaner energy sources. In both Afghanistan and around the world, military forces from many nations are working together to combat tyranny and oppression. Let’s hope our national leaders are willing to do the same.

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