For several years now, the administration has made references to climate change as a security threat. But not until today has the President laid out what that actually means to our uniformed personnel and what denying those changes means for the nation’s safety. It is about time.

As someone in homeland security, I am often asked what is my biggest fear: a pandemic, a terrorist, a loose nuke? All are risks, of course, but the one phenomenon that may have the most likely capacity to alter whatever global stability we can muster at any given moment has to do with Mother Nature. Indeed, the argument the President made Wednesday is more sophisticated than the fact that wars often begin because of the fight over limited resources.

What is unique about this message is the recognition that the changing waters and atmosphere will put pressures on communities that will eventually lead to unrest. That unrest might be war, but it also can manifest itself in all sorts of other ways such as a refugee crisis, overwhelming migration, or humanitarian relief efforts after a disaster. And those will often demand military action by U.S. troops.