Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Politics

Keeping America Safe Means Acting on Climate Change

Talking executive orders, global conflict, and Greenland with the Center for Climate & Security’s Erin Sikorsky.

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

President Donald Trump signed 33 executive orders, memoranda, and proclamations after dinnertime on Monday, giving journalists, pundits, and concerned citizens plenty of material to work through after his first day in office. His Day One mandates included ordering federal workers to return to office full-time — never mind that the U.S. presidency is perhaps the most famous work-from-home job in the world — and formalizing his hatred of a two-inch-long fish. Trump also ordered an end to all wind permits, which my colleague Jael Holzman described as “the worst-case scenario” for the nearly $50 billion industry; paved the way to fire potentially thousands of civil servants; withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement (again); and followed through on his promise to wage all-out war on electric vehicles.

One more of the most significant implications related to climate, however, came buried in Trump’s sweeping reversal of 78 Biden-era executive orders: the overturning of Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.” Biden had signed the executive order during his first week in office and, in doing so, declared that the U.S. “places the climate crisis at the forefront of foreign policy and national security planning.”

To fully understand the consequences of Trump rescinding this order, I spoke with Erin Sikorsky, the director of the Center for Climate & Security, a nonpartisan think tank that specializes in the intersection of climate change and national security policies. Our conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Last night, President Trump rescinded a Biden-era executive order designating climate change a foreign policy and national security priority. Why do you find that concerning?

Regardless of who’s in the White House, climate change continues apace — and continues to threaten U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. We just saw this in the past couple of weeks in Los Angeles with the wildfires there, which caused significant devastation to American lives and livelihoods, but also required the deployment of U.S. troops, threatened U.S. military bases, and interrupted other U.S. foreign policy objectives. President Biden had to cancel his last foreign visit to Europe, where he was supposed to meet with President Zelenskyy to talk about the war in Ukraine; he had to do the same thing during Hurricane Helene and cancel foreign visits that were about competition with China and the war in Ukraine. By sending the message that the U.S. administration is taking a step back from climate as a security issue, it creates a blind spot for the U.S. and creates risks.

When speaking to the press last night, Trump said his No. 1 foreign policy goal is keeping America safe. In your experience, how does climate change fit into that picture?

Keeping America safe means continuing to project military power and stand up to adversaries and competitors — and climate change is shaping all of that. It affects our military operations and our ability to deploy. It also affects Chinese national interests and the threat that China poses.

Our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, which are key to our military strategies for countering China in that region, are all threatened by climate change. Their airports, their economies, their military bases and structures, and the U.S. military facilities that are hosted in those places — they’re all threatened. If you’re not going to focus on that, or you’re not going to address it, then you’re creating a weakness. China’s overarching national security strategy includes environmental and ecological security. It is thinking about how climate affects its strategies.

In other words, our adversaries are acting on this, even if we’re not?

Exactly. And that’s the thing with stepping back from the Paris Agreement, as well: It creates a vacuum of leadership that China is more than happy to step into.

Would you expect the U.S. intelligence community or the Department of Defense to continue to act on climate change as it relates to foreign policy, just in less overt ways? Or do moves like this by the new administration hamstring those efforts?

The Department of Defense’s mission is still to be able to fight and win wars and to preserve its installations and operations. I expect that efforts to invest in resilience and adaptation will continue. There’s been bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for about a decade now to make sure that these issues are taken seriously. When Hurricane Michael decimated Tyndall Air Force Base on the Gulf Coast a few years ago, it was under the last Trump administration that they deployed money to rebuild that base. So I think that will continue.

The same will be true for the U.S. intelligence community, which remains independent from policy. It’s not the State Department, where you have to implement the president’s policies — you’re supposed to warn of risks. Your job is to give the president a decision advantage and warn of threats to the U.S., which means calling it like you see it.

Is there any particular region or conflict that could suffer from politicizing climate change in the coming years?

In Europe in the past year, Poland faced the worst floods in its history and had to deploy thousands of troops to manage those risks.

NATO has been a real leader in this space, partly because of the Arctic and the changes and challenges we see there. And so if the U.S. steps back, other leaders will continue to step forward. We’ve already seen that a bit from some European leader statements. Still, we risk U.S. resilience and dominance in the Arctic if we do not understand how climate affects our ability to operate there.

Speaking of national security in the Arctic, what do you make of the whole Greenland situation?

If the real concern is about U.S. security in the Arctic, there are a lot of other policies that the U.S. can pursue. I don’t think expanding our territory and threatening the purchase of other sovereign nations is the right way to go.

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Energy

AM Briefing: Power Hungry

On the IEAs latest report, flooding in LA, and Bill Gates’ bad news

Global Electricity Use Is Expected to Soar
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms tomorrow could spawn tornadoes in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama • A massive wildfire on a biodiverse island in the Indian Ocean has been burning for nearly a month, threatening wildlife • Tropical Cyclone Zelia has made landfall in Western Australia with winds up to 180mph.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Breakthrough Energy to slash climate grantmaking budget

Bill Gates’ climate tech advocacy organization has told its partners that it will slash its grantmaking budget this year, dealing a blow to climate-focused policy and advocacy groups that relied on the Microsoft founder, Heatmap’s Katie Brigham has learned. Breakthrough Energy, the umbrella organization for Gates’ various climate-focused programs, alerted many nonprofit grantees earlier this month that it would not be renewing its support for them. This pullback will not affect Breakthrough’s $3.5 billion climate-focused venture capital arm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which funds an extensive portfolio of climate tech companies. Breakthrough’s fellowship program, which provides early-stage climate tech leaders with funding and assistance, will also remain intact, a spokesperson confirmed. They would not comment on whether this change will lead to layoffs at Breakthrough Energy.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Climate Tech

Breakthrough Energy Is Slashing Its Climate Grantmaking Budget

Grantees told Heatmap they were informed that Bill Gates’ climate funding organization would not renew its support.

Bill Gates.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Bill Gates’ climate tech advocacy organization has told its partners that it will slash its grantmaking budget this year, dealing a blow to climate-focused policy and advocacy groups that relied on the Microsoft founder, Heatmap has learned.

Breakthrough Energy, the umbrella organization for Gates’ various climate-focused programs, alerted many nonprofit grantees earlier this month that it would not be renewing its support for them. This pullback will not affect Breakthrough’s $3.5 billion climate-focused venture capital arm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which funds an extensive portfolio of climate tech companies. Breakthrough’s fellowship program, which provides early-stage climate tech leaders with funding and assistance, will also remain intact, a spokesperson confirmed. They would not comment on whether this change will lead to layoffs at Breakthrough Energy.

Keep reading...Show less
Blue
Spotlight

Anti-Wind Activists Have a Big Ask for the Big Man

The Trump administration is now being lobbied to nix offshore wind projects already under construction.

Trump and offshore wind.
Getty Images / Heatmap Illustration

Anti-wind activists have joined with well-connected figures in conservative legal and energy circles to privately lobby the Trump administration to undo permitting decisions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to documents obtained by Heatmap.

Representatives of conservative think tanks and legal nonprofits — including the Caesar Rodney Institute, the Heartland Institute and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT — sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum dated February 11 requesting that the Trump administration “immediately revoke” letters from NOAA to 11 offshore wind projects authorizing “incidental takes,” a term of regulatory art referencing accidental and permissible harassment, injury, or potential deaths under federal endangered species and mammal protection laws. The letter lays out a number of perceived issues with how those approvals have historically been issued for offshore wind companies and claims the government has improperly analyzed the cumulative effects of adding offshore wind to the ocean’s existing industrialization. NOAA oversees marine species protection.

Keep reading...Show less