MSNBC Panel: O’Malley’s Right, Global Warming Sparked Rise of ISIS

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:

WITT: "And joining me now is Caitlin Werrell and Francesca Femia, the directors for the Center for Climate and Security. And welcome to you both. And how legitimate is the risk of ISIS can be attributed to climate change." 
WERRELL: "Thank you, Alex. One of the things that we need to look at is what we know. And what we know is that ISIS is thriving on the amount of instability in the country. Another thing we know is the instability is caused by socioeconomic, political and environmental factors as well so in the midst of civil war it is difficult to disentangle what is linked one thing to another but our research found that in 2012 we looked at the specific -- the drought from 2006-2011, one of the worst droughts in recorded history and had a huge impact on the population. 75% of farmers lost total crop failure. 85% of herders lost livestock in northeast of the country and this kumped with the Assad regime created the instability. And we know that ISIS is thriving on instability and this is one small part of the overall instability --
WITT: "--And they are were ridiculed by the RNC calling his claim absurd. I'm looking at a report from the New York Times back in New York of this year. October 2014 report by the Pentagon and 2013, an article published in the atlantic. And you look at these things, O'Malley has fired back, accusing the RNC of denying the facts but is there some merit to his perspective?" 
FEMIA: "Well I can't speak to O'Malley's comments, I can't speak for O'Malley, but what is true is that the U.S. millie and the U.S. Intelligence is concerned how climate change interacts with the security landscape in the Middle East and north Africa and the arctic and the south China sea for a long time, going back to 2003, and the Bush Administration and the Department of Defense put out a report that showed strong concern for how climate change might impact national and international security. So this is certainly not something that is coming -- that is partisan, not something environmentalists are talking about, this is something that institutions of national security and our U.S. military is concerned about. And as Caitlyn just mentioned, we're talking about a complex situation in Syria. But we're looking at how climate change might have interacted with water resources and natural resource management to lead to instability. And also this here, the proceedings showing that the drought Caitlyn just talked about was two to three more times likely due to climate change. So we're talking about the mass displacement of people that led to instability and once you have instability a whole number of things that can go wrong that is hard to predict and one of the things that went wrong is Syria -- is ISIS rather rising to power."
WITT: "Domino effect."