This comes two weeks after Hurricane Helene significantly damaged communities like Asheville, North Carolina, hundreds of miles inland, that were seemingly immunized from the worst effects of climate change. Treating climate change as a national security problem is not a liberal position but a hardheaded realist one. This framing of national security also endured after the 9/11 attacks. After Hurricane Milton, Americans should ask themselves: Are they safer now from threats like climate change and pandemics? And if not, isn’t it time for a real discussion of what truly constitutes national security to begin?

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