The Military, Not the White House, Is Readying for Climate Change
The Pentagon seems at odds with the president over how best to prepare for climate-related extreme weather
In the middle of March, Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller, the U.S. Marine Corps’ top officer, issued a grim warning to the Pentagon on the state of his fighting force.
In a pair of memos addressed to Navy Secretary Richard Spencer and acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Neller outlined a series of unexpected demands that he said pose an “unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency.” Chief among them was President Donald Trump’s state of emergency declaration regarding troop deployments and wall construction at the U.S.-Mexico border. Those unplanned burdens, according to Neller, required an unwelcome shift in resources, forcing the Marines to significantly scale back and, in some cases, cancel outright critical training and exercises. That loss “will degrade the combat readiness and effectiveness of the Corps,” Neller wrote.
But it wasn’t just training that was affected. In an expanded list of “negative factors,” Neller also warned about the scarcity of Pentagon-allocated funding for rebuilding efforts after Hurricanes Florence and Michael, essentially arguing that…
