By John Conger
"A Direct Threat to the National Security of the United States"
In 2017, the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress made a clear declaration in the Fiscal Year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – unopposed formally by the White House at the time – that "It is the sense of Congress that… climate change is a direct threat to the national security of the United States…" The statement and the vulnerability assessment required by the provision was affirmed by a bipartisan vote in the House, accepted by the Senate and signed by President Trump. It reflected the fact that while climate policy can be—and often is—politicized and polarizing, national security leaders have had a long-term consensus that climate change poses risks to both the military and broader national security interests, risks that should be met with urgency, pragmatism and consensus.
Below, we track key provisions that have been included in NDAAs from Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 through FY 2024, building from the initial, bipartisan declaration in 2017 that climate change was a direct threat to national security, to requirements for vulnerability assessments, resilience authorities, strategy requirements, and mainstreaming consideration of climate impacts on mission. These steps also reflect the value of consensus in the House and Senate Armed Services Committees where bills are regularly passed with broad bipartisan majorities. While urgency is important to meet the threat, consensus is important to maintain momentum and avoid backsliding.
There are some clear themes reflected in these provisions, independent of the party in the White House or in control of Congress. First, there's a focus on identifying specific threats and building strategies and plans in response. Second, considerable focus is on installation resilience and withstanding the impacts of climate change. Third, there's a growing trend of moving from plans to investments, with a greater emphasis in recent years on investments in microgrids for energy resilience, leveraging natural features for flood protection, and larger research budgets for both resilience and reducing energy use of operational systems.
Many of the measures that Congress has passed reflect the priorities in the Climate Security Plan for America (2019) and the follow up report, Challenge Accepted (2022), published by the Center for Climate and Security.
Ultimately, each of these provisions returns to the original premise from 2017, that climate change threatens U.S. national security and steps must be taken to address it and to ensure the military's capability and capacity to conduct its missions in spite of it.
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