From subs to bases, "climate change crap" has consequences for U.S. military

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the Pentagon will no longer "do climate change crap" — but the changing climate has a lot in store for the U.S. military.The big picture: Every competition and conflict is influenced by weather. (Consider the forecasts ahead of D-Day in 1944, or Napoleon's ill-fated jaunt into Russia in 1812.)Climate change is already shifting geopolitics. President Trump has mused about 40 "big" icebreakers and taking control of Greenland as melting Arctic ice aggravates competition with Russia and China.Rising sea levels and deeper flooding jeopardize existing bases and limit where new ones can be built. See: Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia and Parris Island in South Carolina.Drought and extreme heat kills. It also spurs economic and political unrest, as evidenced by the extremism spike in the Sahel. Separately, keeping cool requires planning and resources, complicating logistics in far-flung theaters.Changing ocean properties also affect how submarines, often touted as America's ace in the hole, play hide and seek.Driving the news: Navy Secretary John Phelan nixed the service's Climate Action 2030 program, instituted by the Biden administration.Zoom out: It's but one point in a larger Trump 2.0 locus, exemplified by Hegseth's comments.Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell applauded Phelan's move. Trump and Hegseth, he said in a video shared April 25, "have been very clear: less woke, more warfighting."John Ullyot, who handled messaging during both of Trump's terms before his dramatic departure this month, told CNN climate "zealotry and other woke chimeras of the Left are not part" of the Defense Department's mission.The latest: The Trump administration this week dismissed researchers who were compiling the federal government's flagship global warming report, according to the New York Times.Context: There's broad consensus in the national security community that the threats from climate change are real, and dismissing them is dangerous. A Pentagon study published in 2019 found dozens of installations were vulnerable to current or future flooding, drought and wildfire.Carlos Del Toro, Phelan's predecessor, in 2022 described climate change as "one of the most destabilizing forces of our time, exacerbating other national security concerns and posing serious readiness challenges."The Navy that same year held its first climate tabletop exercise, examining how a typhoon, mudslides and more in 2030 affect troops in the Indo-Pacific.Mark Milley, a Trump-era chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 2021 said climate change has a "significant impact on military operations" and exacerbates migration.David Berger, the former Marine Corps commandant, also that year said the U.S. "must not ignore" the potential adverse effects of climate change on Guam, a key island foothold.James Mattis, Trump's former defense secretary, in 2019 said climate change is "a reality." The U.S., he said, is "dealing with open waters where it used to be ice fields."Joseph Dunford, another former Joint Chiefs chairman, in 2018 described climate change as among the "sources of conflict around the world and things we'd have to respond to."Our thought bubble: This isn't ideological. This is tactical and strategic.The bottom line: "You can't stick your head in the sand and ignore a problem and then expect to have ports ready to use, planes ready to fly, troops ready to deploy when the crisis hits. There's a reason that we exercise and plan and do contingency work every day," Jon Wolfsthal, the director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists, told Axios."I'm taking a lot of the bumper-sticker screeds from Hegseth and others with a grain of salt," he added. "The operating military knows how critical these things are."Go deeper: Ending USAID climate programs could increase security risks

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