This is from the introduction in Jonathan Raban’s new, not-yet-released book of essays My Holy War: Dispatches from the Home Front (it comes out in November):

Meanwhile the Bush administration’s prosecution of the war on terror at home and abroad has drained attention and resources from other — just as pressing — issues. In January 2004, Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to the British government, wrote in Nature that “climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today — more serious even than the threat of terrorism.” A month later, a study by Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, “An Abrupt Climate-Change Scenario and its Implications for National Security,” painted an extreme worst-case picture of flood, famine, and nuclear warfare, brought about by a sudden increase in global warming. What was primarily interesting about this paper was that it was financed, and released, by the Pentagon. What was secondarily interesting is that although it gained much notice in Europe, it was barely mentioned in the American press.