The U.S. military has publicly acknowledged that climate change poses a risk to the country’s national security, but it’s doing too little to prepare for environmental changes that will put some of its overseas facilities at risk.
That’s the conclusion of the Government Accountability Office, which delivered a report to lawmakers on Wednesday that faulted the Pentagon for not adequately accounting for the costs it’s already incurring due to damages caused by extreme weather.
"As a result," the report says, "the military services lack the information they need to adapt infrastructure at overseas installations to weather effects associated with climate change and develop accurate budget estimates for infrastructure sustainment."
The GAO analysis, made at the request of Democratic lawmakers, notably found that a number of key defense installations had been exempted from completing a department-wide climate vulnerability assessment. The authors visited 45 military installations and found that just one-third of those had taken steps to incorporate climate change adaptation measures into operational plans.
The defense department has already acknowledged that global warming will put some of its coastal bases at risk, limit training in extreme heat, and spark instability in some parts of the world. In its report, however, the GAO noted significant shortcomings in the Pentagon’s response to those risks.
“GAO is making six recommendations, including that DOD require overseas installations to systematically track costs associated with climate impacts; re-administer its vulnerability assessment survey to include all relevant sites; integrate climate change adaptation into relevant standards; and include climate change adaptation in host-nation agreements.”
In a response accompanying the report, Lucian Niemeyer, assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment, took issue with some of the findings and said tying damage at military installations to climate change was “speculative at best.”
”Tracking the impacts and costs associated with extreme weather events is important; however, the science of attributing these events to a changing climate is not supported by previous GAO reports. Currently, associating a single event to climate change is difficult and does not warrant the time and money expended in doing so.”
The response also accused the GAO of failing to use current defense department policies when making it’s evaluation, and noted that the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy is in the process of being updated.
Niemeyer’s response is in keeping with the overall position of the Trump administration, which has pushed back against climate change and climate science at every turn.