The Pentagon recently announced it will be prioritizing climate change as a national security threat which is a distinct difference from the Trump administration who never made any such declaration on the issue.
The announcement came after President Joe Biden pushed out several executive orders to cut oil, gas, and coal emissions and double energy production from wind turbines located offshore.
The Defense Department said in a statement that they "will immediately take appropriate policy actions to prioritize climate change considerations in out activities and risk assessments, to mitigate this driver of insecurity."
"As directed by the President," the statement continued, "we will include the security implications of climate change in our risk analyses, strategy development, and planning guidance."
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Pentagon will integrate climate risk analysis into modeling, simulation, wargaming, and the Next Defense Strategy. He said by changing how it develops its own carbon footprint, the Pentagon "can be a platform for positive change, spurring the development of climate-friendly technologies at scale."
"There is little about what the Department does to defend the American people that is not affected by climate change," said the Defense Secretary. "It is a national security issue, and we must treat it as such."
Executive orders signed by President Biden single out federal subsidies for oil and other fossil fuels and stops all new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters. Their goal is to conserve 30% of the country's lands and ocean waters in the next decade and transition to an all-electric federal vehicle fleet.
The big picture for Biden is to slow climate change caused by humans but there is also a political risk for the president and his fellow Democrats and oil- and coal-producing states face the reality of growing unemployment rates caused by the U.S. moving toward relying on clean energy such as solar power and wind.
Biden said about the climate crisis, "We can't wait any longer. We see with our own eyes. We know it in our bones. It is time to act."
