Congress CAN Find Time To Talk Long-Term Climate Policy - But Only When It Comes To The Military

[hatrack]

At a congressional hearing Wednesday, senators peppered military leaders with questions about the resilience of Defense Department infrastructure to the climate crisis. Members of both parties asked the officials for updates on individual bases’ resiliency plans, questioned how they were balancing climate adaptation with other priorities, and discussed a list of the most climate-vulnerable military installations — a congressional mandate that President Joe Biden doubled down on last month.

It was the type of detailed climate conversation that’s necessary in an era of a deepening emergency — but a discussion that Congress has relegated disproportionately to military matters. This week’s session was the ninth congressional hearing focused on protecting national security and military installations from climate risk since early 2019, according to a list of around 300 climate-related hearings held since the start of that year. A review of the list, compiled by the Climate Action Campaign, suggests that Congress has prioritized military climate readiness over climate resilience for other types of publicly funded infrastructure.

The most glaring thing about the list of hearings was what didn’t appear on it: During the period, there were zero hearings specifically to strategize on how to protect schools or prisons against the ravages of the climate crisis. A single hearing was dedicated to discussing climate risk to housing and only one focused on risk to toxic sites. Some congressional hearings have focused generally on infrastructure resilience, but no sector has gotten the same attention from lawmakers as the U.S. military — which emits more climate-warming carbon than most countries, according to a 2019 report by Brown University’s Costs of War project. The congressional emphasis on national security adaptation contributes to concerns scientists and policy analysts have raised about whether legislators are meaningfully preparing the U.S. for extreme storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires that are already occurring and will inevitably get worse due to fossil fuel emissions already in the atmosphere. The hearing schedule raises questions about what our future might look like if military facilities are better prepared for the climate crisis than any other public infrastructure.

EDIT

The number of national security hearings is in part a result of Republicans’ climate denial. John Conger, director of the Center for Climate and Security, described a direct relationship between climate denial and the militarization of climate policy. “I look around at our security apparatus versus others around the world,” Conger said. “In some places where climate is more of a universal — everyone accepts the fact that climate change is happening — security has been less of a focus, because it hasn’t had to be.” He pointed to a 2018 Washington Post article, headlined “How to get Trump to sign climate legislation? Put it in a defense bill,” which noted that the recently signed defense budget bill was “the only legislation readying the country for climate change to become law” at the time. Conger said, “That framing means the folks that want to make progress on climate, but recognize that they might be blocked by more conservative voices, say let’s make progress here.”

EDIT

https://theintercept.com/2021/05/22/congress-climate-military/

[Autumn]

1. So we people will be fine. Climate change will only impact the military and they got it covered.

yay us.