Climate change is more than just an environmental or economic problem; it is also a threat multiplier that has forced military leaders to adapt their operations and strategies from the ground up. With its proactive, non-ideological approach, the US defense establishment offers a useful model to follow.
WASHINGTON, DC – As the planet overheats and the transition to a low-carbon economy progresses, climate risks and changing energy choices are reshaping security considerations globally. Climate change, after all, is a “threat multiplier,” a term that one of us (Goodman) coined in 2007 to explain how planetary warming fuels instability in some of the world’s most volatile regions. While political leaders worry that ambitious policies to cut greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions will cost votes or aggravate geopolitical tensions in an already troubled world, security leaders would remind them that inaction will bring even greater peril.
Fortunately, citizens do not have to choose between denial and action. As political leaders engage in endless debates over the causes and implications of climate change, military leaders have already quietly moved ahead. America’s armed forces have long understood that we must be able to walk and chew gum at the same time; navigating complex interconnected threats has always been part of the mission. Sending young women and men into war entails numerous risks, and defense leaders are trained from the start to anticipate, plan, and prepare for a wide range of catastrophes – from nuclear threats to terrorist attacks.
For the military, there can be no choice between addressing climate threats and countering Chinese aggression and Russian revanchism, or between preparing installations and weaponry for climate risks and zeroing in on terrorism. The only question is how to address all these challenges most effectively. Because the military cannot afford to leave any blind spots, it is confronting climate-driven risks at every level, across every branch of service.
Climate Insecurity
Climate-related threats are real and ever-evolving, and they will continue to loom large, no matter the outcome of any election. In the Arctic, for example, retreating sea ice is transforming trade routes and kicking off a territorial and resource race with Russia and China, as both lay claim to the emerging sea lanes and the region’s valuable mineral reserves. In the Middle East, a famously arid region, the weaponization of water is intensifying conflicts among warring sects and factions.
Meanwhile, rising seas and worsening natural disasters in the Indo-Pacific are threatening the economic, social, and infrastructural stability of major coastal metropolitan areas, including Mumbai, Jakarta, Bangkok, and Ho Chi Minh City. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, climate change is driving the spread of fungal diseases, decimating agricultural production, destroying livelihoods, and inhibiting economic growth. And around the world, global warming is fueling migration from sinking island states and drought-stricken regions.
These trends are hitting the world’s poorest communities the hardest, exacerbating existing socioeconomic divisions and creating openings for malign political opportunists to exploit the resulting instability. But advanced economies are also vulnerable, because the increasing fragility of global supply chains may affect their access to food, energy, raw materials, and other critical goods.
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Shifting supply chains also reflect the transition away from fossil fuels. This process is creating new supply routes and new markets, intensifying the West’s competition with China. The rare earths and critical metals used in batteries and other renewable-energy technologies are found predominantly in China and other countries across the Global South, and China has used lucrative trade deals to integrate many of these countries into its Belt and Road Initiative.
Moreover, even as we shift our energy resources, energy demand is booming, partly owing to the emergence of artificial intelligence and the exponential growth of data centers. This growing demand is threatening the stability of America’s aged electricity grid – the same grid on which most of our military installations rely. It should go without saying that an unreliable energy supply is not an option for the US military, which must be able to defend the country’s interests – at home and abroad – around the clock.
To address this risk, each branch of the military plans to integrate a microgrid at each of its critical installations. The US Army, for example, will have all of its bases backed up by 2035. By “islanding the base,” all missions will have reliable, resilient, and redundant access to power, even if the commercial grid is down.
In conjunction with this effort, the Department of Defense aims to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. Each branch of the service has already established its own net-zero targets and identified the steps to achieve them. The military is also improving the energy efficiency of its buildings as it works to safeguard installations from increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather.
Similarly, all 32 members of NATO have adopted an ambitious, yet realistic, Climate Change and Security Action Plan to incorporate climate considerations into the alliance’s broader political and military agenda. These ambitious efforts are not primarily about environmental stewardship; rather, the goal is to preserve defense capabilities in a dangerous world. As many defense officials say: It’s more about missions than emissions.
The US military understands that energy and climate resiliency are critical to the success of our operations. If our bases cannot withstand natural disasters, our national security will be in jeopardy. If our forces are dependent on liquid fuel that must be transported thousands of miles across dangerous terrain, their security will be in jeopardy. If our missions rely entirely on an unreliable electric grid, the US will be vulnerable.
Climate Situational Awareness
The need to adapt to evolving threats and guarantee mission security and effectiveness has catapulted the armed forces to the forefront of climate and energy leadership. But it wasn’t always this way. For generations, building the strongest military seemed synonymous with gas-guzzling weapons systems. The Abrams tank, one of the most powerful armored weapons built in the 1980s, consumes two gallons of fuel per mile. Powering mission-critical tanks, trucks, aircraft, and weaponry requires exorbitant amounts of fuel.
The US military began confronting these issues – along with the environmental harm caused by dropping Agent Orange on the battlefield and dumping toxic chemicals on our own soil – back in the 1980s and 1990s. The post-Cold War consensus around sustainability required our forces to integrate environmental awareness into their training and operations in a manner that previously had not seemed necessary.
One of us (Goodman) was the Pentagon’s Chief Environmental Officer, a role that involved working closely with military leaders to align defense strategies and plans with environmental needs and opportunities, as well as engaging with other armed forces around the world. The priority at the time was to clean up bases and other military installations, lest they become a threat to public health or the local environment.
But by the early 2000s, it was clear that we faced a new challenge, one far more complex in its potential to change our natural environment and reshape geopolitics. Addressing climate change requires more than just replacing harmful chemicals with benign alternatives (although that was hard, too!) or working around sensitive habitats. It demands new diplomatic plans, new energy strategies, new approaches for securing our installations, and new pathways for protecting our troops.
Fortunately, aligning our defense strategy with a recognition of climate risks and opportunities is making America stronger and more competitive. Policymakers – and decision-makers of all kinds – have much to learn from the US military’s climate leadership. If generals charged with the tremendous responsibility of fighting wars can expand their mission to account for climate change, the rest of us have no excuse for inaction.
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WASHINGTON, DC – As the planet overheats and the transition to a low-carbon economy progresses, climate risks and changing energy choices are reshaping security considerations globally. Climate change, after all, is a “threat multiplier,” a term that one of us (Goodman) coined in 2007 to explain how planetary warming fuels instability in some of the world’s most volatile regions. While political leaders worry that ambitious policies to cut greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions will cost votes or aggravate geopolitical tensions in an already troubled world, security leaders would remind them that inaction will bring even greater peril.
Fortunately, citizens do not have to choose between denial and action. As political leaders engage in endless debates over the causes and implications of climate change, military leaders have already quietly moved ahead. America’s armed forces have long understood that we must be able to walk and chew gum at the same time; navigating complex interconnected threats has always been part of the mission. Sending young women and men into war entails numerous risks, and defense leaders are trained from the start to anticipate, plan, and prepare for a wide range of catastrophes – from nuclear threats to terrorist attacks.
For the military, there can be no choice between addressing climate threats and countering Chinese aggression and Russian revanchism, or between preparing installations and weaponry for climate risks and zeroing in on terrorism. The only question is how to address all these challenges most effectively. Because the military cannot afford to leave any blind spots, it is confronting climate-driven risks at every level, across every branch of service.
Climate Insecurity
Climate-related threats are real and ever-evolving, and they will continue to loom large, no matter the outcome of any election. In the Arctic, for example, retreating sea ice is transforming trade routes and kicking off a territorial and resource race with Russia and China, as both lay claim to the emerging sea lanes and the region’s valuable mineral reserves. In the Middle East, a famously arid region, the weaponization of water is intensifying conflicts among warring sects and factions.
Meanwhile, rising seas and worsening natural disasters in the Indo-Pacific are threatening the economic, social, and infrastructural stability of major coastal metropolitan areas, including Mumbai, Jakarta, Bangkok, and Ho Chi Minh City. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, climate change is driving the spread of fungal diseases, decimating agricultural production, destroying livelihoods, and inhibiting economic growth. And around the world, global warming is fueling migration from sinking island states and drought-stricken regions.
These trends are hitting the world’s poorest communities the hardest, exacerbating existing socioeconomic divisions and creating openings for malign political opportunists to exploit the resulting instability. But advanced economies are also vulnerable, because the increasing fragility of global supply chains may affect their access to food, energy, raw materials, and other critical goods.
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Shifting supply chains also reflect the transition away from fossil fuels. This process is creating new supply routes and new markets, intensifying the West’s competition with China. The rare earths and critical metals used in batteries and other renewable-energy technologies are found predominantly in China and other countries across the Global South, and China has used lucrative trade deals to integrate many of these countries into its Belt and Road Initiative.
Moreover, even as we shift our energy resources, energy demand is booming, partly owing to the emergence of artificial intelligence and the exponential growth of data centers. This growing demand is threatening the stability of America’s aged electricity grid – the same grid on which most of our military installations rely. It should go without saying that an unreliable energy supply is not an option for the US military, which must be able to defend the country’s interests – at home and abroad – around the clock.
To address this risk, each branch of the military plans to integrate a microgrid at each of its critical installations. The US Army, for example, will have all of its bases backed up by 2035. By “islanding the base,” all missions will have reliable, resilient, and redundant access to power, even if the commercial grid is down.
In conjunction with this effort, the Department of Defense aims to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. Each branch of the service has already established its own net-zero targets and identified the steps to achieve them. The military is also improving the energy efficiency of its buildings as it works to safeguard installations from increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather.
Similarly, all 32 members of NATO have adopted an ambitious, yet realistic, Climate Change and Security Action Plan to incorporate climate considerations into the alliance’s broader political and military agenda. These ambitious efforts are not primarily about environmental stewardship; rather, the goal is to preserve defense capabilities in a dangerous world. As many defense officials say: It’s more about missions than emissions.
The US military understands that energy and climate resiliency are critical to the success of our operations. If our bases cannot withstand natural disasters, our national security will be in jeopardy. If our forces are dependent on liquid fuel that must be transported thousands of miles across dangerous terrain, their security will be in jeopardy. If our missions rely entirely on an unreliable electric grid, the US will be vulnerable.
Climate Situational Awareness
The need to adapt to evolving threats and guarantee mission security and effectiveness has catapulted the armed forces to the forefront of climate and energy leadership. But it wasn’t always this way. For generations, building the strongest military seemed synonymous with gas-guzzling weapons systems. The Abrams tank, one of the most powerful armored weapons built in the 1980s, consumes two gallons of fuel per mile. Powering mission-critical tanks, trucks, aircraft, and weaponry requires exorbitant amounts of fuel.
The US military began confronting these issues – along with the environmental harm caused by dropping Agent Orange on the battlefield and dumping toxic chemicals on our own soil – back in the 1980s and 1990s. The post-Cold War consensus around sustainability required our forces to integrate environmental awareness into their training and operations in a manner that previously had not seemed necessary.
One of us (Goodman) was the Pentagon’s Chief Environmental Officer, a role that involved working closely with military leaders to align defense strategies and plans with environmental needs and opportunities, as well as engaging with other armed forces around the world. The priority at the time was to clean up bases and other military installations, lest they become a threat to public health or the local environment.
But by the early 2000s, it was clear that we faced a new challenge, one far more complex in its potential to change our natural environment and reshape geopolitics. Addressing climate change requires more than just replacing harmful chemicals with benign alternatives (although that was hard, too!) or working around sensitive habitats. It demands new diplomatic plans, new energy strategies, new approaches for securing our installations, and new pathways for protecting our troops.
Fortunately, aligning our defense strategy with a recognition of climate risks and opportunities is making America stronger and more competitive. Policymakers – and decision-makers of all kinds – have much to learn from the US military’s climate leadership. If generals charged with the tremendous responsibility of fighting wars can expand their mission to account for climate change, the rest of us have no excuse for inaction.