{"id":86194,"date":"2025-10-18T10:53:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T10:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/86194\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T10:53:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T10:53:17","slug":"pentagon-retreats-from-climate-fight-even-as-heat-and-storms-slam-us-troops-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/86194\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon retreats from climate fight even as heat and storms slam US troops | Climate crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story is from Floodlight<\/a>, a non-profit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.<\/p>\n

Retired Marine Corps gunnery sergeant Vida Rivera knows heat can be as dangerous as any enemy.<\/p>\n

Early in her military<\/a> career, she collapsed from heat exhaustion while carrying a 65lb pack on a sweltering hike in Quantico, Virginia. Years later in Afghanistan, Rivera drove a truck in temperatures nearing 120F (49C). But she was ready. She had taken a mechanics course \u2013 twice \u2013 to make sure she could fix the truck\u2019s air conditioning if it failed.<\/p>\n

She knew extreme heat<\/a> could incapacitate her marines. \u201cThey need water and good temps like everybody,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Across the US military, the climate crisis<\/a> isn\u2019t a distant threat. It\u2019s a daily challenge. The fallout from a warming planet has hit the military hard, sidelining more than 10,000 troops<\/a> with heat-related illnesses since 2018, flooding bases and undermining everything from runways to nuclear readiness.<\/p>\n

Extreme weather is battering installations from Guam to North Carolina and fueling instability in regions overseas where American forces may be called to intervene.<\/p>\n

For decades, the Pentagon viewed the climate crisis as a national security threat \u2013 not for environmental reasons, but because it undermined operations and readiness.<\/p>\n

Now the Trump administration<\/a> is dismantling that approach. Pentagon leaders have cut climate research funding and abandoned adaptation plans. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth<\/a> has dismissed<\/a> global warming concerns as \u201cclimate change crap\u201d.<\/p>\n

Medics treat a US army soldier for heat exhaustion at the Fort Irwin national training center in California. Such cases are increasing as global temperatures rise. From 2020 to 2024, the annual rate of heat exhaustion among service members jumped 52%. Photograph: Staff Sgt Dayton Mitchell\/US Air Force<\/p>\n

Critics warn that the military is being forced to fly blind \u2013 and that the cost could be strategic vulnerability in a world where climate is increasingly shaping conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it puts our troops at risk,\u201d said Erin Sikorsky, the director of the Center for Climate & Security. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be less prepared if our troops are deployed somewhere where it\u2019s incredibly hot and their equipment doesn\u2019t work right, or if they themselves can\u2019t physically operate \u2026 That\u2019s malpractice, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Defense Department did not respond to Floodlight\u2019s requests for public documents and an interview to discuss changes to its climate policy.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon\u2019s 2026 budget request recommends cutting<\/a> $1.6bn in \u201cwasteful\u201d climate spending. Among the targeted programs: a $6m grant to decarbonize emissions from navy ships. Where most of the remaining cuts would come from is unclear.<\/p>\n

That marked a sharp break from the previous administration, when the Department of Defense sought $5bn for climate initiatives in its fiscal 2024 budget \u2013 including efforts to harden bases against extreme weather and reduce battlefield fuel dependence.<\/p>\n

How warming undermines US military power<\/p>\n

In October 2018, Hurricane Michael struck Tyndall air force base in Florida with 160mph (255km\/h) winds, flipping fighter jets and damaging more than 600 buildings. The branch spent nearly $5bn to repair and upgrade the base to become more resilient to future storms.<\/p>\n

And in May 2023, Typhoon Mawar slammed Andersen air force base in Guam with 140mph winds and 28in of rain, damaging almost 500 buildings and costing nearly $10bn to repair the base and harden it against future extreme weather events.<\/p>\n

According to the National Weather Service, unusually warm ocean temperatures supercharged these storms.<\/p>\n

Rising seas<\/a> also are projected to cause chronic flooding at coastal military bases in the coming decades, with half of coastal bases each facing 270 or more flood events every year, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Major storms can hobble nuclear deterrence, too. Hurricanes could damage submarines or delay the transport of nuclear warheads, warned researcher Jamie Kwong, a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. All three nuclear delivery systems \u2013 air, land and water \u2013 could be hampered by climate change, she said.<\/p>\n

Since 2022, the US military has been deployed to more than 230 climate emergencies, according to the non-profit Center for Climate and Security<\/a>. And heat-related illnesses<\/a> among troops jumped 52%<\/a> between 2020 and 2024.<\/p>\n

Much of that work has fallen to the national guard. Over the past decade, the national guard put in nearly 4m days of service responding to hurricanes, floods, wildfires and other disasters, the Pentagon said in a recent report to four Democratic US senators who requested the information.<\/p>\n

Fort Benning has long had a problem with excessive heat. Stretching across 182,000 hot and muggy acres in west-central Georgia straddling the Alabama state line, it is one of the army\u2019s top training centers \u2013 and has recorded more heat-related illnesses than any other US military<\/a> base. Until about a decade ago, someone there was dying from the heat every three years.<\/p>\n

That crisis led to the 2019 creation of the US army\u2019s Heat Center atFort Benning, where military personnel are taught how to prevent and treat heat-related illnesses.<\/p>\n

Officers there developed techniques such as arm immersion \u2013 lowering soldiers\u2019 arms into cold water during training breaks to reduce body temperature \u2013 and ice sheeting, where frozen bed sheets are wrapped around overheated troops to bring down body heat quickly.<\/p>\n

To reduce the risk of heat illnesses, the military generally suspends non-essential outdoor activities on extremely hot days. These so-called \u201cblack flag\u201d days \u2013 generally 90F or above \u2013 are becoming more common, according to a 2023 defense department report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The military may have to suspend summer training at its hottest bases and \u201cspend a heck of a lot of money\u201d to relocate that training, predicts Caroline Baxter, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for education and training under Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Military planes and ships are affected, too. Hot, humid air means planes struggle to generate the lift they need. A 2019 Center for Climate & Security brief<\/a> warns rising heat and humidity will force military aircraft to reduce payloads \u2013 or abandon missions entirely.<\/p>\n

Warm seawater, meanwhile, makes it harder to cool ship engines, while melting glaciers dilute ocean salinity, which can compromise the effectiveness of sonar.<\/p>\n

Retired army Lt Gen Russel Honor\u00e9, who led the military response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, noted that drought caused by global warming helped trigger the Syrian civil war and the armed conflict in Sudan. He has since founded the Green Army<\/a>, an organization that fights pollution in Louisiana.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can change your policy to not consider the impact of global warming on your strategic posture,\u201d Honor\u00e9 said, but \u201cthe heat will cause a disruption to global stability as well as security. And it will continue to have a human impact on our day-to-day training and operational readiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melting Arctic ice also increases<\/a> the potential<\/a> for military conflict, experts say, because it\u2019s opening up shipping lanes that were once inaccessible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat that really means is there is an accident waiting to happen,\u201d according to Threat Multiplier, a book by Sherri Goodman, who as deputy undersecretary of defense led the military\u2019s environmental efforts during the Clinton administration.<\/p>\n

Mission over emissions: why US military once took climate seriously<\/p>\n

The Department of Defense developed its first climate change strategy in 1998 and a decade later declared global warming a national security issue<\/a>. After Biden took office, the military\u2019s focus on climate impacts took on new urgency.<\/p>\n

In 2021, the then defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, called climate change an \u201cexistential threat to our nation\u2019s security\u201d, adding its damage \u201ccannot be avoided\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hurricane Michael brought flooding and extensive damage to Tyndall air force base in Florida in 2018. Tyndall is just one of many coastal military bases that have been hammered by storms fueled by rising ocean temperatures. Photograph: Army Staff Sgt Alex Henninger\/US Department of Defense<\/p>\n

For the Pentagon, the climate crisis wasn\u2019t just about the environment \u2013 it was about how and where troops could operate.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do I continue to do my job despite the fact that the operational environment is changing?\u201d said John Conger, a former high-ranking defense department official who later ran the Center for Climate & Security. \u201cYou\u2019re not thinking about emissions, you\u2019re thinking about missions.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2022, the army began rolling out its first hybrid tactical vehicles. Hybrids are quieter and consume less fuel, which can save lives in combat.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were losing marines and soldiers in the constant movement of fuel to the front in Afghanistan and Iraq,\u201d Goodman wrote in her book. \u201cFor every 24 fuel convoys in Afghanistan, one soldier was killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

New doctrine: climate doesn\u2019t matter any more<\/p>\n

Donald Trump<\/a> has pushed to rechristen<\/a> the Department of Defense as the \u201cDepartment of War.\u201d And Hegseth has made it clear that the Pentagon\u2019s priorities have shifted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe @DeptofDefense does not do climate change crap,\u201d he wrote in a March post on X<\/a>. \u201cWe do training and warfighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

On 17 March, Hegseth banned Pentagon agencies<\/a> from spending money on climate planning, ordering leaders to \u201cremove all references to climate change and related subjects from mission statements\u201d. In his 30 September address<\/a> to hundreds of military leaders at Quantico, Hegseth declared<\/a> there would be \u201cno more climate change worship\u201d in the military.<\/p>\n

The secretary\u2019s March directive does leave room for the continuation of some weather-related work, including risk assessments, environmental reviews and base resilience improvements.<\/p>\n

But the Pentagon also announced it was canceling 91 studies focused on climate and social science research. The move will save $30m \u2013 a tiny fraction of the department\u2019s $850bn budget \u2013 scuttling research on emerging security threats, including climate change, extremism and disinformation.<\/p>\n

Climate action plans from the army, navy, air force and coast guard have quietly disappeared from public websites in recent months. The Pentagon also shut down its climate resilience portal.<\/p>\n

Conger, the former Center for Climate & Security director, said: \u201cIf you do not have complete information because you willfully ignore certain parts of the puzzle, you put yourself at a disadvantage \u2013 because the Russians and the Chinese aren\u2019t ignoring it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is from Floodlight, a non-profit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. Retired Marine Corps…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-86194","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}