The announcement by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin came out shortly after President Joe Biden signed a series of executive orders relating to the climate crisis Wednesday.
The Defense Department “will immediately take appropriate policy actions to prioritize climate change considerations in our activities and risk assessments, to mitigate this driver of insecurity. As directed by the President, we will include the security implications of climate change in our risk analyses, strategy development, and planning guidance,” Austin said in a statement.
“There is little about what the Department does to defend the American people that is not affected by climate change. It is a national security issue, and we must treat it as such,” Austin added.
Since 2010, the Pentagon has acknowledged that climate change could pose a threat to military capabilities, reports The Hill. In fiscal year 2020, the department doled out $67 million in funds to help bases alleviate or repair climate-related damage to several military bases, including Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, which was damaged by Hurricane Michael in 2018, and Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, which flooded in 2019.
Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base required more than $400 million in repairs because of an extreme weather event – yet under the Trump administration – defense officials were very careful not to mention anything that would suggest climate change was to blame.
According to Defense News, the public version of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy included only a single mention of climate-related concerns; the public version of the National Defense Strategy (NDS),
And it will be interesting to see how Austin plans to tackle the military’s carbon footprint going forward. The Pentagon is often reported as being the largest single consumer of fossil fuels in the United States.
