Pentagon already takes climate change seriously, but GAO wants more action

Within the Trump administration, the Pentagon is arguably and, perhaps to some, surprisingly one of the most progressive departments when it comes to contemplating the effects of a changing climate.

Well before President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a Chinese hoax, took office, military leaders talked about global warming as a "threat multiplier" worsening drought, famine and other factors leading to war. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Congress he believes "a changing climate - such as increased maritime access to the Arctic, rising sea levels, desertification, among others - impact our security situation."

Even so, a government watchdog says saying so without taking action is not enough. This past week, the Government Accountability Office released a report on the climate preparedness of the Pentagon, concluding that while it frequently voices concern about how rising sea levels and atmospheric temperatures could affect military activity abroad, it is not doing enough to turn those words into action at foreign facilities.

Beginning in 2014, the Defense Department began surveying those running military installations in order to identify how climate change may affect the bases they oversee.

But the GAO found only a third of the plans it reviewed - for such things as construction or renovation of piers, hangars and other infrastructure - properly addressed flooding, drought, winds, wildfires and other effects commanders identified in that survey.

"While the military services have begun to integrate climate change adaptation into installations' plans and project designs," the report said, "this integration has been limited."

The watchdog also found the military's review was "incomplete and not comprehensive" because dozens of overseas sites were exempt from completing the vulnerability assessment - and because the Pentagon doesn't consistently track the estimated cost of climate impact.

Some ways of adapting to a warming planet are apparent. For Navy bases, for example, piers need to built higher to avoid being inundated by future flooding.

But in other cases - like a desert base potentially facing more intense drought - how does a commander adapt? The Pentagon isn't giving its leaders at overseas bases enough guidance on how to do that, the GAO concluded.

"We believe that there are opportunities to improve that," said Brian Lepore, director of defense capabilities and management at the GAO, who led the team that wrote the report.

Lepore and his colleagues visited 14 military facilities and interviewed leaders of 31 more.

John Conger, a senior policy adviser with the Center for Climate and Security and former deputy comptroller at the Pentagon, said the Defense Department would "lose the forest for the trees" if it focused too closely on tracking estimated costs. "It can only benefit DoD to become more resilient to climate impacts, but it isn't clear that applying their effort to accounting for climate costs would help that," Congers said.

But Conger thought the report was correct to say more guidance is needed.

"GAO's most important conclusion is that DoD needs to update lower-level guidance to show installations officials how to implement the overarching direction that they incorporate climate impacts into their plans," he said.

GAO, an agency that audits federal programs for lawmakers, undertook this report at the request of Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, and five Senate Democrats.

Among Cabinet members in the Trump administration, Mattis holds views on climate change that are most closely in line with the scientific community, which sees global warming as a real and dire threat.

"Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today," Mattis told senators earlier this year. "It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning."

Even Congress, controlled in both chambers by a Republican Party deeply skeptical of mainstream climate science, has shown a willingness to give the Defense Department wide berth on the issue.

In July, a climate-change provision in a defense reauthorization bill, requiring the Pentagon to assess the vulnerabilities of the 10 bases most threatened by climate change in each service, survived a 185-to-234 vote in the House to strip it out. On Tuesday, Trump signed the authorization bill into law.