The word Defense in the name of the government agency now dubbed the Department of War invited “bureaucratic mission creep”—or so argues a Washington Post editorial that points to the nineteen mentions of “climate” in the 2022 National Defense Strategy. The op-ed suggests that previous administrations made fighting climate change “the military’s job” at the expense of its traditional focus on deterring conflict and, when necessary, winning wars. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Both of us worked on strategy and climate security matters in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, so we are well-positioned to articulate how and why the Department’s focus on climate change has grown over the years, across administrations of both parties. The simple fact is that climate change poses enormous challenges for the American military. If the Department does not continue adapting to climate-related threats, it will face extraordinary new costs, which it will pay in billions of dollars, in warfighting readiness, and, ultimately, in the lives of American service members.
To illustrate, in 2018 and 2019, the Department sustained more than $10 billion in damages at Tyndall Air Force Base, Camp Lejeune, and Offutt Air Force Base as the result of climate-driven storms. In the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress required the Department to scrutinize the military’s vulnerabilities to wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and sea-level rise; the consequent report gave rise to new predictive tools to foresee and mitigate the effects of climate hazards on defense installations.
The 2022 NDS reflected this hard experience, as well as hard science: “Increasing temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, rising sea levels, and more frequent extreme weather conditions will affect basing and access while degrading readiness, installations, and capabilities.” To address these concerns, the NDS directed the Department to strengthen its “ability to withstand and recover quickly from climate events.” The climate and weather monitoring tools that the Department relies on are now being dismantled to score political points. That means more risk—for installations, for military platform performance, and for individual service members, many of whose readiness and wellbeing are already being compromised by the increase in “black flag days,” when temperatures are too hot to train.
Climate change also figures heavily in the NDS because the military is increasingly called upon to deal with it—by state and local authorities who need help responding to climate-driven disasters. The number of personnel days the National Guard dedicated to fighting wildfires increased from 14,000 in 2016 to 176,000 in 2021, and have since continued to rise. As we wrote in the NDS, climate change “will increase demands, including on the Joint Force, for disaster response and defense support of civil authorities.” These new requirements mean that our soldiers are not training for core national-security tasks like preparing for war or, as this administration has decided, picking up trash in our nation’s capital. And such requirements are likely to accelerate with the pending demise of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Indeed, climate change is reshaping the very map of the world—“creating new corridors of strategic interaction, particularly in the Arctic region,” as the NDS put it. Melting sea ice is creating new possibilities for navigation and resource exploitation, which is leading to more Russian and Chinese military operations along the Alaskan coastline. To accomplish its homeland-defense mission, the Department must closely monitor both the changing geophysical context as well as the shifting geopolitical environment.
There are many additional reasons the Department should be thinking intently about the implications of climate change, but the last one we’ll mention is the likelihood that global warming will spur a massive increase in migration, which is ostensibly a primary concern of the Trump administration. Scholars have identified drought as a key causal factor in the Syrian civil war, which led millions to seek refuge in Europe. As the NDS stated, and experience has since validated, “Insecurity and instability related to climate change may tax governance capacity in some countries while heightening tensions between others, risking new armed conflicts and increasing demands for stabilization activities.”
We agree with the Trump administration that fighting climate change should not be the primary focus of our national-security establishment. No credible defense strategist has ever argued that should be the case. However, all Americans should want our military to integrate consideration of climate change into its planning and operations so it can achieve its mandate of defending against threats to the American people. Failure to plan for operating conditions that are changing fundamentally would be a colossal strategic mistake.
The Department of Defense was increasingly prepared for all threats. The Department of War might prepare for a far narrower set. If so, we will all come to regret it.
Dr. Josh Busby is a Professor at the University of Texas who served as a senior climate advisor within the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2021-2023. His core responsibility was integrating the effects of climate change on the military, and how DoD might build resilience to them, into the 2022 NDS.
Greg Pollock is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University who served in a series of leadership positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2010-2025, most recently as the acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Arctic and Global Resilience.
The post You may not be interested in climate change, but it is interested in you appeared first on Defense One.
