Donald Trump’s Newest Adviser Says Global Warming Is a Huge Threat to National Security

But don’t get too excited.

Evan Vucci/AP


Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey has signed on as a senior adviser to Donald Trump—even though the two men’s views are oceans apart on an issue very close to Woolsey’s heart: climate change.

For years, the former CIA director has been an advocate for cleaner energy and has called for addressing global warming from a national security perspective. He argues that our current energy sources put us at “the whims of OPEC’s despots” and make us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. He wants the United States to shift from its reliance on coal and oil to renewables and natural gas. “There’s enough consensus that human-generated global warming gas emissions are beginning to have an effect,” he said in an interview in 2010. “Next year might be cooler than this year but that doesn’t mean the trend isn’t there.” (Indeed, the world keeps getting warmer.)

Woolsey signed a statement declaring that climate change represents a “serious threat to American national security interests.”

In 2013, Woolsey was one of dozens of national security experts who signed a statement declaring that climate change represents a “serious threat to American national security interests.” The “potential consequences are undeniable, and the cost of inaction, paid for in lives and valuable US resources, will be staggering,” read the statement. “Washington must lead on this issue now.”

Trump, on the other hand, doesn’t believe in global warming, having called it a Chinese hoax. He’s even pointed to cold winter weather in an attempt to debunk this “GLOBAL WARMING bullshit.” Trump wants to scrap President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan and back out of the Paris climate accord. Rather than move toward renewable energy, he wants to make the United States energy independent by resuscitating the coal industry.

Mother Jones reached out to Woolsey to ask how he feels about Trump’s climate change denialism. He did not immediately respond. In a statement distributed by the Trump campaign, Woolsey, who served as CIA director under President Bill Clinton, criticized Hillary Clinton for how she ran the State Department. Trump, Woolsey insisted, “understands the magnitude of the threats we face and is holding his cards close to the vest.” So does he think Trump is a secret believer in climate change after all?

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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