The latest US National Security Strategy cites climate change as “an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows and conflicts over basic resources like food and water.”

But a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies,Combat vs. Climate describes how our national budget seriously and dangerously ignores this finding.  The report calls on policy makers to realign federal spending to address this security threat, detailing how the Pentagon needs to give up unnecessary parts of its spending to fund climate change-fighting efforts across our national budget.

The report paints a chilling picture: “Climate scientists warn that, as in Syria, unless the global greenhouse gas buildup is reversed, the U.S. could be at risk for conflicts over basic resources like food and water. Meanwhile, plans to spend $1 trillion to modernize our entire nuclear arsenal remain in place, and projected costs of the ineffective F-35 fighter jet program continue to climb past $1.4 trillion.  Unless we get serious about moving the money, alarms from all over about the national security dangers of climate change will ring hollow.”

Here are some key findings from the report:

• “The U.S spends 28 times as much on traditional military security as on climate security. This is hardly commensurate with the magnitude of this “urgent and growing threat to national security.” The pound of military cure still vastly outweighs the ounce of climate catastrophe prevention. Indeed, applying the proportions of pound-to-ounce, that is, 16:1, would be a huge improvement.