Jeremy Schulman, “Defense Contractor: Climate Change Could Create ‘Business Opportunities‘,” Mother Jones, 14 August 2013

Of all the business opportunities presented by global warming, Raytheon Company may have found one of the most alarming. The Massachusetts-based defense contractor—which makes everything from communications systems to Tomahawk missiles—thinks that future “security concerns” caused by climate change could mean expanded sales of its military products. …

What kind of business opportunities? Raytheon cites its renewable energy technologies, weather-prediction products, and emergency response equipment for natural disasters. But the company also expects to see “demand for its military products and services as security concerns may arise as results of droughts, floods, and storm events occur as a result of climate change.” …

Raytheon certainly isn’t alone in contemplating the potential for climate-related conflict. Recently, a group of researchers published a paper in Science concluding that global warming could substantially increase the frequency of violent conflict. The paper, which surveyed dozens of academic studies, noted that “some forms of intergroup violence, such as Hindu-Muslim riots [in India]…tend to be more likely following extreme rainfall conditions” and that low water availability, very low temperatures, and very high temperatures “have been associated with organized political conflicts in a variety of low-income contexts.” That may be happening in Syria, where some experts believe that a severe drought helped spark the country’s bloody civil war. …

Raytheon also isn’t the only defense contractor thinking about both the risks and opportunities associated with government responses to a warming world. Boeing, for example, says in a Carbon Disclosure Project report that its business could be impacted by the US government’s “increasing focus” on renewable energy. And Lockheed Martin states that the reputational boost from its efforts to reduce carbon emissions could help it win defense contracts.

Read the full article here.