The Climate Battlefield: New Missions, New Kit, & New Theaters
How climate change is reshaping military strategy, disaster response, and the future of global security.
This is a summary of episode 372 of the Reversing Climate Change podcast. You can listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy your shows.
🔹 Quick Takeaways
The military’s climate paradox: Climate change is already disrupting operations, logistics, and infrastructure; but some leaders still treat “climate” as a political wedge instead of a security reality.
Pragmatism in uniform: Soldiers see extreme heat, drought, and flooding as day-to-day operational challenges, not ideology. For many, climate risk equals mission risk.
Apocalypse meets adaptation: Militaries are preparing for climate-driven disasters, humanitarian crises, and mass migration all while trying to maintain readiness for state conflict.
Disaster response creep: Armies from Canada to Australia are increasingly filling civilian gaps in wildfire and flood response. It works… for now… but strains resources and blurs missions.
Soft power through resilience: Humanitarian and disaster-relief deployments have become powerful diplomatic tools, strengthening alliances and legitimizing global presence.
The Arctic front line: Melting ice opens new trade routes, mineral competition, and security flashpoints between the U.S., China, and Russia—an emerging Cold War on a warmer planet.
Migration as a moral test: Climate migrants aren’t the threat that some think—but our reactions to them might be. How nations handle movement will define the century’s political tone and moral character.
The militarization dilemma: Relying on armies to manage climate crises risks normalizing force in civic life and obscuring the need for civilian institutions of resilience.
NATO and net-zero militaries: European leaders now argue that clean energy investments count as defense spending, because energy independence is security.
Uncertainty as strategy: Global alliances wobble as the U.S. becomes unpredictable; trust, not surprise, may prove the real superpower.
📝 When the Battlefield Heats Up
Ross Kenyon opens by asking Erin Sikorsky, the director of The Center for Climate and Security, how climate change and military power are colliding. Her answer is blunt: the collision is already here.
From Iraq to Afghanistan, soldiers have fought in punishing heat, watched equipment fail in dust and floods, and seen droughts push civilians toward extremism.
🪖 An Apolitical Military in a Political Storm
The U.S. military prides itself on being apolitical, but the phrase “climate change” has become a flashpoint. Figures like former defense secretary Pete Hegseth deride parts of the climate focus as potentially “woke” or a distraction from lethality.
Sikorsky draws the distinction: critics conflate climate awareness with decarbonization mandates. Inside the Pentagon, she notes, pragmatism prevails: leaders quietly prioritize resilience, weather adaptation, and base hardening even when public rhetoric denies it.
They can ban the word ‘climate’ but they still have to rebuild after the hurricane.
⚙️ Practical Soldiers, Political Civilians
The military doesn’t care about slogans—it cares about readiness. Rising seas threaten Norfolk Naval Base; wildfires endanger Western training ranges; supply chains buckle under floods. For logisticians, climate disruption is an operational hazard, not an ideological debate.
Ross and Sikorsky agree that this quiet realism inside the ranks contrasts sharply with political showmanship outside of it.
❄️ The New Arctic Cold War
As the Arctic melts, nations are racing for access to minerals, shipping routes, and influence. Sikorsky explains that China’s newfound “polar ambitions” exist only because climate change made them possible.
The irony: the more accessible the Arctic becomes, the more catastrophic global warming already is.
🌪️ When Soldiers Become Firefighters
Across democracies, militaries are filling the vacuum of climate disaster response.
In Canada and Australia, troops were deployed repeatedly to fight wildfires.
The U.S. National Guard now trains foreign partners in wildfire and flood response.
It’s effective, but dangerous. We’re asking them to be the easy button. Overreliance risks stretching forces thin and militarizing what should be civilian responsibilities. Yet when disaster strikes, they’re the only ones who can move that fast.
⚔️ Climate Security or Fortress Security?
Sikorsky cautions against the “Fortress America/Fortress Europe” mindset—using the language of security to justify xenophobia. Migrants fleeing drought and crop failure aren’t invaders; they’re victims of the same planetary instability.
Investing in adaptation abroad: drought-resistant crops, water infrastructure, social stability—is far cheaper, and more humane, than militarizing borders later. But short political cycles and domestic populism make those long-term investments a hard sell.
🧭 The Discount Rate and the Great Filter
Ross observes that humans seem neurologically incapable of valuing the future properly: we discount long-term stability for short-term comfort. Sikorsky agrees, citing hard evidence: a U.S. Agency for International Development program in Honduras that provided drought-resistant seeds reduced migration intent by 70%. The math is simple—prevention pays—but politics won’t always cooperate.
🌍 Great Powers, Small Windows
From the U.S. and China eyeing Arctic expansion to France’s failed stabilization missions in the Sahel, Sikorsky sees a world entering a multipolar climate era—where environmental stress amplifies every rivalry.
China’s soft-power investments in Pacific climate aid, she notes, often replace withdrawn U.S. programs.
🧱 NATO’s Green Debate
European militaries are redefining resilience. Retired generals from the U.K. and the Netherlands recently urged NATO to count clean-energy investments as defense spending, arguing that energy independence equals national security.
⚖️ The Uncertain Superpower
Ross presses her on the U.S.’s unpredictability: could volatility be strategic leverage? Sikorsky doubts it.
🕊️ Final Reflection
Sikorsky’s closing message isn’t hawkish but humanistic: militaries can help manage climate chaos, but they can’t solve it. Real security depends on prevention, trust, and cooperation.
