
Flooding at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska in March 2019.
(Image credit – Tech. Sgt. Rachelle Blake / U.S. Air Force)
Flooding at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska in March 2019.
(Image credit – Tech. Sgt. Rachelle Blake / U.S. Air Force)
Congressional Democrats are making the Department of Defense a major focus of their efforts to address climate change by leveraging their influence over the National Defense Authorization Act
Building on provisions attached to the last two NDAAs, the House version of this year’s bill would require the military to factor the anticipated impacts of climate change and extreme weather into its facility construction planning. The House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees have also drawn attention to the subject through recent hearings
The White House has not publicly weighed in on the matter. However, the National Security Council has reportedly
Congress first required DOD to estimate the effects of climate change and associated extreme weather events on large bases through a provision attached to the NDAA for fiscal year 2018. Though there was an attempt to strip the provision from the bill, it was retained with bipartisan support
DOD delivered its report
After the committee first criticized the report in January, DOD provided
This year’s bill also directs the department to assess the feasibility of “transitioning from 100-year floodplain data to a forward-looking predictive model that takes into account the impacts of sea-level rise.” Another new provision would require DOD to certify that proposed construction projects have accounted for “known extreme weather risks” prior to approval.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has joined its House counterpart in seeking to improve the resilience of military infrastructure to natural hazards, though its report
The Senate bill would require DOD to detail its spending on adaption and mitigation efforts specific to extreme weather, which it defines as “recurrent flooding, drought, desertification, wildfires, and thawing permafrost.” Another provision would update requirements that DOD incorporate projections of “changing environmental conditions” into its facility master plans, adding to a list of authorized sources for such projections. The initial list was established through last year’s NDAA and includes the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the National Climate Assessment, among other sources.
DOD has yet to fully implement last year’s provision, according to a Government Accountability Office report
Members of the House Intelligence Committee have expressed their own interest in bolstering agencies’ ability to assess the impacts of climate change. At a hearing
Rep. Denny Heck (D-WA) noted he was introducing a bill
The hearing also touched on ways to improve the flow of climate information from civilian agencies such as NASA to the intelligence community. Rob Schoonover, a scientist at the State Department, attested that barriers are “largely ad hoc” rather than formalized, noting that he has relied on personal relationships to acquire information.
Summarizing the role and conclusions of intelligence officials in estimating climate impacts, he remarked, “The intelligence community’s role is not to predict the future, but rather to assess risk and strategic warning. Absent extensive mitigating factors or events, we see few plausible future scenarios where significant harm does not arise from the compounded effects of climate change.”
Soon after the hearing concluded, the particulars of the discussion were quickly overshadowed when it came to light
Happer is a prominent physicist at Princeton University and a vocal opponent of the scientific consensus on climate change, who has often expressed the view that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will prove beneficial on balance. He has held a variety of positions in government science policy, including as director of the Department of Energy’s science programs under President George H. W. Bush, and in 2017 he interviewed
This year, Happer has reportedly advocated for the White House to establish a panel that would scrutinize recent government assessments of climate change impacts, drawing the ire of congressional Democrats
How aggressively the White House will press its views on climate science remains to be seen, but congressional Democrats have begun to scrutinize its tactics. Responding to the White House’s interference with Schoonover’s testimony, Schiff sent letters