A soldier walks across a makeshift bridge of picnic tables to avoid flood waters at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, in November 2018. Climate change threatens US military bases and operations around the world. (Photo: U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Andrew Carroll)
For more than half a century, US intelligence agencies and the armed forces have analyzed threats to national security from a range of environmental angles, including dependence on fossil fuels, competition for scarce water resources and strategic minerals, and especially human-caused climate change. These reports have been produced under presidential administrations across the political spectrum.
Hundreds of assessments have come from, among others, White House National Security Strategy reports, Department of Defense Quadrennial Defense reviews, and studies from every branch of the military, all the war colleges, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Their consistent conclusions: Environmental factors pose direct, indirect, and accelerating threats to US forces, operations, bases, and national security interests.
These actions will not reduce the actual risk that environmental problems pose for national security or the military—the physical reality of those threats will be unchanged. Instead, they will blind the country to environmental instability and real-world conflict risks that jeopardize our military and national security.
Awareness of environmental security threats goes back to the middle of the last century. In November 1965, President Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee issued a report warning about the growing impacts of environmental pollution, including the threat of catastrophic climate impacts from melting of ice caps, sea-level rise, and rising temperatures. In September 1969, White House advisor Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a memo to John Ehrlichman, assistant to President Nixon, highlighting those conclusions and urging the administration and NATO get involved with the growing risk to the United States of “the carbon dioxide problem.”
A year later, the Rand Corporation launched a program on “climate modification and national security” saying “the U.S. might be harmed either inadvertently or maliciously by changes in the climate.” In December 1974, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger issued National Security Study Memorandum NSSM200 suggesting “a major research effort to address the growing problems of water supply, ecological damage, and adverse climate” and their threat to “world economic well-being and political stability.”
Naval operations in the coming half century may be drastically affected by the impact of global climate change. For the Navy to be fully prepared for operations in this future climate environment, resources of both mind and money must be committed to the problem.
President Bush’s 1991 National Security Strategy explicitly called out climate change as a threat already contributing to political conflict:
Global environmental concerns include such diverse but interrelated issues as stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change, food security, water supply, deforestation, biodiversity and treatment of wastes. A common ingredient in each is that they respect no international boundaries. The stress from these environmental challenges is already contributing to political conflict.
The recognition of environmental security threats has only intensified in subsequent decades in hundreds of unclassified assessments and government statements, focused in two key areas: the risk that these factors will lead to (1) “widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states;” and (2) the strategic implications for “military capability,” bases, and operations, as the U.S. Joint Forces Command concluded in 2007. That same year, the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard published their joint concerns about how climate change is reshaping Arctic strategic issues.
In the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (HR2810), Congress noted the testimony of Secretary of Defense James Mattis:
I agree that the effects of a changing climate—such as increased maritime access to the Arctic, rising sea levels, desertification, among others—impact our security situation.
and the testimony of Former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army Gordon Sullivan:
Climate change is a national security issue. We found that climate instability will lead to instability in geopolitics and impact American military operations around the world.
This emphasis continued through the Biden Administration as well and in 2023, the Annual Threat Assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stated:
In every region of the world, challenges from climate change, demographic trends, human and health security, and economic disruptions caused by energy and food insecurity and technology proliferation will combine and interact in specific and unique ways to trigger events ranging from political instability, to terrorist threats, to mass migration, and potential humanitarian emergencies.
Climate change will increasingly exacerbate risks to U.S. national security interests as the physical impacts increase and geopolitical tensions mount about the global response to the challenge. The increasing physical effects of climate change also are likely to intensify or cause domestic and cross-border geopolitical flashpoints.
But there were also hints that outmoded security concepts like realpolitik, focused on narrow “superpower competition,” together with deep climate denial, were in ascendency. The first Trump administration censored words like “climate change” in government documents and narrowed security concerns to single-nation competition with China, North Korea, and Iran. The Trump White House failed to produce any National Security Strategy in 2018, 2019, or 2020, and the 2018 National Defense Strategy report, which replaced the Quadrennial Defense Assessments, for the first time made no mention of environmental security threats at all. These unprecedented changes were so worrisome that in March 2019, 58 senior military and national security leaders wrote a letter to President Trump to denounce his efforts to “dispute and undermine military and intelligence judgments on the threat posed by climate change.”
All of this is prelude to the recent massive and coordinated effort to purge documents that reference environmental security threats, censor and cut current research and intelligence assessments, and suppress climate science that informs the national security community. In early March 2025, democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Hegseth criticizing the Trump Administration efforts saying:
Your threats to cut climate programs at the Department of Defense (DoD) will jeopardize our national security, putting thousands of American lives and billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk.
Very real climate changes are already underway, including accelerating extreme events, an increasingly ice-free Arctic and rising sea levels, disruptions to food supplies, more failed states and environmental refugees, and violence over shared water resources. Wars and armed conflicts are already being triggered, influenced, or worsened by environmental factors.
Denying or turning a blind eye to environmental security threats and hamstringing intelligence agencies will only make the United States weaker and more exposed to dangerous security surprises, military bases and operations more vulnerable, and communities less prepared. Physical reality will always trump political ideology.
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The Post has a good piece up about all the hidden ways the Trump White House is trying to break different parts of the government — through non-payment of grants (different from cancelations), arbitrary limits on purchase authority, etc. They note something very similar to the funds-ghosting I’ve reported on at the National Institutes of Health, only here with the EPA.
Here’s the key passage that TPM Reader SS flagged to my attention …
Asked for comment, EPA spokeswoman Molly Vaseliou said in an email: “No ORD funding requests to OMS have been denied. At ORD and throughout the agency, EPA is continuing research and labs to advance the mission of protecting human health and the environment.”
The three ORD employees said that while no office funding requests have been denied, many requests have not been approved.
“We’ve sent multiple requests for new expenses to them, and they just sit on them,” one of the staffers said. “But they never officially cancel or deny anything. It’s like a pocket veto.”
Pretty clear modus operandi: don’t cancel anything, just stop paying and refuse to offer any explanation. So you create confusion and if people aren’t confused there’s no cancelation to point to. So you kill the programs on the vine without leaving a lot of finger prints.
It so happens that I learned of another example of this happening at EPA just today, quite separate from this example from the Post. So this is clearly pervasive. And we can now add the EPA to the NIH as example points of this.
That still leaves the question of why? Why not just cancel the grants? I suspects it’s because these are both cases where they have at least some fear of blowback for asphixiating the programs and they’re also trying to accumulate surpluses so they can come in with rescission bills at the end of the summer. I continue to think that the politics of this are far worse for the White House than folks on either side seem to think. But these are really still suppositions as to the “why.” For the moment, we can just say that the same funds-ghosting is happening at another agency.
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Hasan Piker, the biggest progressive political streamer in America, was detained by Customs and Border Protection for hours of questioning upon returning to the U.S. from a trip to France this weekend. Piker posted about the incident on X and later talked about it on stream.
He was detained in Chiago and questioned for two hours about protected journalistic activities like who he’s interviewed and his political beliefs. He was asked whether or not he’d interviewed Hamas, Houthis, or Hezbollah members. He was questioned about his opinions on Trump and Israel and asked about his history of bans on Twitch. His phone and laptop were not confiscated.
"They straight up tried to get something out of me that I think they could use to basically detain me permanently,” Piker said on stream following the incident. “… [the agent] kept saying stuff like, do you like Hamas? Do you support Hamas? Do you think Hamas is a terror group or a resistance group?”
“I kept repeating the same statement over and over again,” Piker said. “I kept saying... I'm on the side of civilians. I want the endless bloodshed to end. I am a pacifist. I want wars to end… which is insane because up until this moment. If you were to say as an American citizen, you stand 10 toes down with Hamas, or you stand 10 toes down with the Houthis, they can’t deny you entry into the country for that shit.”
“DHS flagging and detaining one of the U.S.’s largest left-wing voices for their political opinions while the Trump admin suggests they might suspend habeas corpus does not portend well for the future,” said lawyer and content creator Alex Peter.
Piker's detention occurs against a backdrop of increasing scrutiny of political activists and commentators, especially those who challenge the administration’s policies on Israel. This type of targeting creates an undeniable chilling effect. Already activists who are critical of our government are nervous to leave the country, given the crackdowns happening on speech and the increased scrutiny at the border. Detaining U.S. citizens over speech, especially a political commentator and journalist, allows border control to become a tool of political intimidation.
“The reason they’re doing [this] is to try to create an environment of fear, to try to get people like myself, or others who would be in my shoes that don't have that same level of security, to shut the fuck up,” Piker said on a stream recounting the details of the incident.
“Nothing I have done online is illegal as of now,” Piker added. “Laws may change in the future, and they might actually start prosecuting speech, which I do fear is the goal of this administration. But so far, everything I’ve done is fully protected under the first amendment. And none of the questions [I was asked by CPB] are actually valid questions to ask.”
“I think they [detained me] because they know who the fuck I am and they wanted to put the fear of god into me, not knowing that I'm a stubborn piece of shit and that's not going to work at all,” Piker said.
In a functioning democracy, public figures and journalists are supposed to be able to criticize the government without fear of retaliation. That criticism is vital in holding power to account. When authorities start treating political beliefs like security threats, it sends a loud, chilling message to anyone expressing themselves online, especially those with a platform, that they might be targeted. You can watch Piker get into the full details of his detainment in the video below.
Weight-loss jabs could almost halve the risk of obesity-related cancers, a landmark study suggests.
Cancer experts said the findings were “transformational” and could herald a “whole new era of preventive cancer medicine”.
Obesity is associated with 13 different cancers. While losing weight reduces that risk, scientists have calculated weight-loss injections have a bigger protective effect over and above shedding the kilos.
Researchers in Israel studied 6,000 adults with no prior history of cancer, who either underwent bariatric surgery or took glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) liraglutide (Saxenda), exenatide (Byetta) or dulaglutide (Trulicity). The drugs work by mimicking the GLP-1 hormone in the body, which lowers blood sugar levels and makes people feel fuller for longer.
Although those who had bariatric surgery lost around double the weight of those on weight-loss medication, the study, presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Malaga, Spain, and published in The Lancet’s eClinicalMedicine, found the reduction in cancer risk was broadly the same.
Bariatric surgery reduces the risk of cancer by 30-42%, the researchers said. Therefore, accounting for the relative advantage of surgery in reducing patients’ weight, the authors found weight-loss drugs were more effective at preventing obesity-related cancer.
“The protective effects of GLP-1RAs against obesity-related cancers likely arise from multiple mechanisms, including reducing inflammation,” said co-lead author Prof Dror Dicker from Hasharon Hospital, Rabin Medical Center, Petah Tikva, Israel.
Newer drugs could prove even more beneficial, he added. “New generation, highly potent GLP-1RAs with higher efficacy in weight reduction may convey an even greater advantage in reducing the risk of obesity-related cancers, but future research is needed to make sure these drugs do not increase the risk for non-obesity-related cancers.”
A separate study, presented at the conference and published in New England Journal of Medicine, directly compared weight-loss jabs and found patients taking Mounjaro lost about 50% more weight than those taking Wegovy. Patients on Mounjaro typically saw a 20.2% drop in body weight at the end of the trial compared with 13.7% with Wegovy.
Responding to the findings, Prof Mark Lawler, an internationally renowned cancer research expert from Queen’s University Belfast, said while this was an observational study and caution was needed interpreting the results, the results were very exciting.
“We already know bariatric surgery cuts obesity-related cancer risk by about a third; these data suggest target GLP-1s may cut that risk by nearly 50% – an approach that would be transformational in preventing obesity-related cancer.
“Biologically, this makes sense, as targeting GLP-1 dampens down inflammation, one of the hallmarks of cancer.
“While further work is required on how it works, these data raise the intriguing possibility that a GLP-1 jab could prevent multiple cancers in the general population, including common cancers like breast and colorectal, and difficult to treat cancers like pancreatic and ovarian. This work could herald a whole new era of preventive cancer medicine.”
Prof Jason Halford, former president of the European Association for the Study of Obesity and head of psychology at Leeds University, said the drugs should also be tested in patients with newly diagnosed cancers to see if they boosted survival chances.
He added the drugs had “the potential to be a new dawn. And it’s not just prevention, weight management in people recently diagnosed with cancer is also critical in terms of outcomes. That would be the next thing to look at. More and more cancers are being associated with obesity.”
A team of 54 international experts from 12 different countries issued a joint statement at the conference, calling for weight-loss drugs to be trialled as a priority for cancer prevention. As a result, a UK team of scientists, based at the University of Manchester and funded by Cancer Research UK, are planning a large-scale clinical trial involving tens of thousands of patients, which they hope to get under way within “three to five years”.
Dr Matthew Harris, at the Manchester Cancer Research Centre, said weight-loss jabs “provide genuinely fantastic weight loss, and may provide an intervention that could be delivered on a population-scale, where we have not been able to achieve this before”.
[9 avril 2025] L’année 2024 confirme une amélioration progressive et continue de la qualité de l’air dans la région depuis deux décennies, notamment grâce aux réglementations et politiques publiques mises en œuvre à différentes échelles. Toutefois, la pollution de l’air demeure un enjeu sanitaire majeur, avec des effets persistants sur la santé et l’environnement.
Sur le long terme, une diminution forte de la pollution de l’air
Depuis 2005, les concentrations des deux principaux polluants réglementés pour leurs effets sur la santé – les particules fines (PM2,5) et le dioxyde d’azote (NO₂) – ont diminué respectivement de 55 % et 50 %. Cette baisse s’explique par l’impact combiné des politiques européennes, nationales et locales en matière de mobilité, de chauffage, d’énergie et d’environnement. En conséquence, le nombre de décès prématurés liés à la pollution de l’air a diminué d’un tiers entre 2010 et 2019.
L’ozone de basse altitude constitue toutefois une exception : son impact sanitaire stagne, notamment du fait du réchauffement climatique et du transport de pollution à longue distance. Ce constat est partagé à l’échelle de l’hémisphère nord.
Les habitants de Paris, de la petite couronne et ceux situés à proximité des axes de circulation sont les plus exposés à la pollution de l’air
En 2024, environ 800 Franciliens étaient encore exposés à un dépassement des valeurs limites réglementaires, principalement à proximité immédiate des grands axes routiers, contre 5 000 personnes en 2023. Les habitants de Paris, de la petite couronne et des zones proches du trafic dense (périphérique parisien, autoroutes A1, A3, A4, A6, A86) restent les plus exposés.
Les valeurs limites actuelles devraient être respectées sur l’ensemble de l’Île-de-France dans un futur proche, mais de nouveaux seuils plus stricts, se rapprochant des recommandations de l’OMS, entreront en vigueur en 2030. Si ces normes étaient déjà en application, près de 2,6 millions d’habitants franciliens auraient été concernés par un dépassement en 2024.
Malgré les progrès observés, la pollution de l’air reste responsable d’impacts importants sur la santé. En Île-de-France, elle entraînait encore en 2019 une perte moyenne de 10 mois d’espérance de vie par adulte, et contribuait à 10 à 20 % des cas de maladies respiratoires chroniques (asthme, BPCO, cancers), et 5 à 10 % des maladies cardiovasculaires ou métaboliques (AVC, infarctus, diabète de type 2).
Selon les travaux d’Airparif et de l’ORS-IDF, au moins un quart des décès prématurés dus à la pollution de l’air pourraient être évités si les futures valeurs limites européennes étaient respectées.
Une dynamique à maintenir
Les estimations d’Airparif montrent que les politiques actuelles, pourraient permettre de respecter les futures normes de qualité de l’air sur la quasi-totalité du territoire d’ici 2030. Des efforts supplémentaires seraient néanmoins nécessaires dans les zones les plus exposées au trafic.
La pollution de l’air entraîne également des conséquences environnementales : elle altère la biodiversité, affecte les rendements agricoles, et contribue au changement climatique. À ce titre, l’impact de l’ozone sur le réchauffement climatique a augmenté de 15 % entre 2005 et 2024 en Île-de-France.
Airparif annonce également, en partenariat avec Atmo France, le lancement à la mi-avril de prévisions de l’indice pollen pour chaque commune francilienne. Ces prévisions, disponibles pour le jour même et les deux jours suivants, permettront aux personnes allergiques d’adapter leur traitement et leurs comportements. Dans un premier temps, six espèces seront prises en compte, dont le bouleau, les graminées et l’ambroisie. Ce dispositif sera progressivement élargi à d’autres pollens allergisants.
There is a growing, concerning movement undermining one of the most well established scientific theories there is: germ theory, the idea that germs—like viruses and bacteria—cause disease.
But it’s subtle.
Outright denial of germ theory is still a fringe idea: very few deny that viruses and bacteria exist. Rather, it’s the effect of germs—whether germs are the true cause of an illness—that is increasingly being called into question.
What germ theory is and isn't
When germ theory was first proposed in the 1800s, scientists didn’t have the modern scientific tools we have today, and there was genuine debate over how infectious diseases like cholera were transmitted. Some thought it was microscopic germs, while others thought it was "bad vapors" (miasma theory). But that debate has been long settled. Microscopic germs like Vibrio cholerae (the bacteria that causes cholera), measles, influenza, and polio all cause infections that make people sick.
John Snow's famous cholera map in which he discovered a cluster of cholera cases near the water pump in 19th century London, one of the early findings leading to the discovery that cholera was caused by a water-borne bacterium.
Of course, there is more to germs than just disease. Some germs are good for us—like the many germs that make up the microbiome in our gut. And some germs cause disease only some of the time, like the MRSA bacteria that I am almost certainly colonized with as a healthcare worker. And sometimes, other health conditions—like those with diabetes or conditions that weaken the immune system—make people more susceptible to infectious germs.
Germ theory does not say all germs are bad, nor does it say germs are responsible for every disease known to humans, nor does it say that any exposure to a germ is a guarantee of illness. It says that certain germs can cause infections that make people sick. And when that happens, the germ really is to blame.
A new subtle form of germ theory denial
But this idea is starting to be rejected and replaced with a new, inaccurate view of why infections happen and what we should do about them.
This new version of germ theory denial still acknowledges that germs are real, but says they’re not all that much of a threat for a healthy individual, and not the real problem causing disease. Instead, when someone catches an infection, the person’s immune system and lifestyle are blamed—an unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, exposure to “environmental toxins,” or underlying conditions are allegedly the “true” cause of disease because they damaged the immune system.
Said another way, it’s the belief that infections don’t pose a risk to healthy people who have optimized their immune system. And if you want to prevent infections, vaccines aren’t the solution, becoming healthier through nutrition, exercise, and dietary supplements are.
This version of germ theory denialism has become quite common. It’s what drove the comorbidity fallacy during the pandemic—the belief that COVID wasn’t really what was killing people, that underlying health conditions were actually to blame. It also drove the rumor that if you just eat right and exercise enough, there’s no reason to get vaccinated, because your immune system will be sufficiently “boosted.” More recently, it can be seen in the rumor that vaccines didn’t really cause the decline in vaccine-preventable illnesses like measles and polio during the 20th century, rather, better nutrition and sanitation were the true drivers.
In his recent book The Real Anthony Fauci, RFK Jr. promotes this inaccurate view of germs. He laments that “germ theory” has dominated over the long-debunked 19th-century “miasma theory,” which he defines as “preventing disease by fortifying the immune system through nutrition and by reducing exposures to environmental toxins and stresses.” This appears to be a novel definition of miasma theory, as historical records define it as the belief that diseases like cholera were transmitted through “bad air” emanating from corpses or corrupting matter.
According to this new definition of miasma theory, germs only pose a threat if the immune system has already been damaged by poor diet and environmental toxins. He summarizes with a false dichotomy about measles:
“When a starving African child succumbs to measles, the miasmist attributes the death to malnutrition; germ theory proponents (a.k.a. virologists) blame the virus. The miasmist approach to public health is to boost individual immune response.”
This overly simplistic, false view explains RFK Jr.’s approach to public health. He seems to believe that germs like measles are not actually a threat for a healthy person, and can be overcome by nutritional and environmental interventions that “boost” the immune system. This likely explains why for the current measles outbreak, he has been far more enthusiastic about advocating for cod liver oil than vaccination.
This, of course, is abysmally misguided, as any pediatrician or historian can tell you.
A kernel of truth wrapped in a lie
This version of germ theory denialism is particularly sneaky, because it contains a kernel of truth. It’s true that a person’s general health (which is impacted by diet, exercise, age, etc.) can influence how well they will fight off infections. In the case of the starving African child, both inadequate nutrition and the measles infection need to be addressed; we don’t have to choose.
The critical falsehood that makes this view so dangerous is the belief that if you become healthy enough and optimize your nutrition, infectious diseases are no longer a threat. This is simply not true. A healthy 19-year-old can still die from meningitis, even if they’re the star athlete. A fit, healthy 70-year-old can still die from the flu, even if their diet and exercise are perfect. A healthy 6-year-old child can still die from measles, even if they were perfectly fed and didn’t have any underlying conditions.
“Boosting the individual immune response” through nutrition is not anywhere near a sufficient public health response to a measles outbreak. Getting enough cardio and greens is not going to stop bird flu.
Bottom line
A balanced diet, exercise, and sanitation are all incredibly important for keeping us healthy, but they are not a magic cure for infectious disease. Infections have historically been the top killer of humans, and if we forget that and abandon the tools we’ve created to keep them at bay, they will be sure to remind us again.
Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD, is a resident physician and Yale Emergency Scholar, completing a combined Emergency Medicine residency and research fellowship focusing on health literacy and communication. In her free time, she is the creator of the medical blog You Can Know Things and author of YLE’s section on Health (Mis)communication. You can subscribe to her newsletter or Substack. Views expressed belong to KP, not her employer.
Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is a public health newsletter with one goal: to “translate” the ever-evolving public health science so that people feel well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support the effort, subscribe or upgrade below:
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A soldier walks across a makeshift bridge of picnic tables to avoid flood waters at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, in November 2018. Climate change threatens US military bases and operations around the world. (Photo: U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Andrew Carroll)
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