How the Defense Department Can Move from Abstraction to Action on Climate Change

Apr 17, 2021 | Samuel Brannen, Sarah Ladislaw, and Lachlan Carey
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One week after he was sworn in as president, Joe Biden directed his secretary of defense to make climate change a central priority. The president’s executive order instructed the Department of Defense to work with an interagency group over the next 120 days to create a first-of-its-kind joint “Climate Risk Analysis,” and determine the implications of that analysis for the “National Defense Strategy, Defense Planning Guidance, Chairman’s Risk Assessment, and other relevant strategy, planning, and programming documents and processes.” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin affirmed the department’s intent to execute those orders, and to report back annually to the National Security Council on its progress. He also announced a new Department of Defense Climate Working Group chaired by a special assistant to the secretary of defense. After joining the first meeting of that working group, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks publicly stated that “confronting climate challenges is mission critical,” which carries substantial weight given her central role in directing the Defense Department’s internal processes.

The Defense Department and the broader U.S. national security apparatus have since at least the early 1990s recognized climate change as a primary strategic threat shaping the security environment. However, relatively little has been done to address the overall implications of climate change through changes in strategy, planning, and resources.