Hurricane Michael, a Cat 5 storm fueled by the excessive warmth of the Gulf, destroyed much of Tyndall AFB in Panama City. Most of Florida’s 20 military installations are located on the coast, which makes them vulnerable to rising sea levels and other symptoms of climate change. (Photo via the Florida Air National Guard)
When I was a kid growing up in Pensacola, I played “Army Man” a lot. I’d climb up in the persimmon tree in my backyard and pretend it was my fort. I’d shout “PEW! PEW!” and pretend to repel every kind of invader.
Then I became friends with a classmate named David. He and I and his little brother Doug would prowl around in a REAL fort — the Pensacola Naval Air Station, right on the water.
Their dad was in charge of base security, so we had the run of the place. It was full of jets, training planes, white-suited sailors, camo-clad Marines, and the occasional aircraft carrier. This was SO much better than swinging from a limb in a persimmon tree “fort.”
Florida is home to more than 20 military installations, most of them scattered along our coastline. Near Fort Walton Beach there’s Eglin Air Force Base, the largest air base in the world. In Tampa, there’s MacDill Air Force Base, which is headquarters for the U.S. Central Command and the Special Operations Command. In Jacksonville, the Mayport Naval Station is home to the Fourth Fleet. So, it’s not like we’ve got a bunch of rinky-dink spots — they’re important.
But as a report noted last year, “many of the same factors that make Florida an attractive location for military presence and training are the same factors that make it vulnerable to climate change.”
Those Florida military installations were doing their best to counteract the degradation of their bases from climate change. Then former Fox News TV host turned newly minted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told them to cut it out.
Last week Hegseth, who seems more familiar with bourbon than battalions, ordered the Pentagon to cut about $50 billion from its Biden-era programs. That way the money can instead be funneled to the current administration’s top priorities, which include defending our border from frightened people fleeing violence in their own countries.
The list of programs on the chopping block, USA Today reported, will include “so-called ‘climate change’ and other woke programs, as well as excessive bureaucracy,” a Defense Department statement said.
“So-called”? Mr. Secretary, even people like your deluded boss (who claims it’s just a hoax) all call it “climate change.” But let’s not get hung up on terminology and instead discuss the terminal idiocy of what you’re proposing.
Hegseth said his primary goal is “making our military once again into the most lethal, badass force on the planet.”
But unless the military gets back to work on how to cope with higher sea levels, hotter temperatures, and other symptoms of our warming world, they won’t be ready to defend themselves, much less the rest of us.
Climate change “simply isn’t a political or cultural issue,” retired Adm. Kevin Green of the American Security Project told me. “It’s a practical issue.”
This land is your land
Florida’s military bases are more than just a big warehouse full of war machinery or generators of billions of dollars in the Florida defense-industry economy.
They’re also the stewards of a lot of taxpayer-owned land. Some of them have done a remarkable job of protecting our property and the environmental treasures that live there.
For instance, Eglin managed to pull a small fish, the Okaloosa darter, back from the brink of extinction. The darter is now doing so well, in 2023 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service formally removed it from the endangered species list.
And the Avon Park Air Force Range, a 101,000-acre bombing and gunnery range that straddles Polk, Osceola, Okeechobee, and Highlands Counties, has been crucial to the rescue of the Florida grasshopper sparrow.
It’s not that the military is full of undercover tree huggers who joined up just because they like to wear green. It’s that they — unlike a certain bombastic president I could name — follow the law. The law says protect endangered species, so they do.
In a similar way, the leaders of these military bases know they shouldn’t let any enemy force wipe out the base or wash it away or sicken its soldiers, sailors, and pilots. Those are some of the dangers posed by climate change, with its rising sea levels, dangerous storms, and increased heat.
“Climate change is a threat to our tactical capabilities,” said Susan Glickman of the Cleo Institute, a Miami organization that focuses on climate literacy.
For example, Glickman said, look at what Hurricane Michael did in 2018 to Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City. Michael was one of a series of hurricanes that sucked up power from our over-heated Gulf of Whatchamacallit — I guess it was still “Mexico” then. That’s how climate change made these storms far more powerful and faster than they might have been.
As a result, Michael’s 160-mph Category 5 hurricane-force winds slammed into the 29,000-acre installation and left behind little besides piles of rubble.
The military has been rebuilding the base to better withstand another such onslaught. But Hegseth’s goofy order seems to be telling Tyndall to stand down. Just rebuild what was there before and stop worrying about future hurricanes knocking it down again.
Honestly, though, they and Florida’s other military bases should be rethinking their locations.
Building or rebuilding on Florida’s increasingly battered coastline carries the risk of another disaster, said John Conger, a former Defense Department official who’s now director emeritus of the Center for Climate and Security.
“There will be consequences if we decide to accept that risk,” he told me.
So when another monster storm churns up out of the Gulf or the Atlantic and clobbers another Florida military base, no one — including Hegseth — should sound like a surprised Private Gomer Pyle and say, “Shazam!”
When reality really meant something
Hegseth’s own Defense Department first raised this as a problem in 2018. It issued a report that said about half of our country’s military bases around the world were vulnerable to being damaged or destroyed by climate-related forces.
But it made no suggestions on what to do about it. That’s not a surprise, considering who was in the White House at that point.
Just last year, a Pentagon official talked about how important climate was to carrying out the military’s mission.
“The issue here that we face is that environmental conditions [directly affect] military planning, and they affect every kind of decision making that we do,” she said. “For instability, competition and conflict, we have to pay attention to the climate.”
But that was last year, when reality really meant something.
The current administration doesn’t want anything to do with reality. Like Sgt. Schulz in “Hogan’s Heroes,” they see nothing, NOTHING! And they want you to stop seeing it, too.
The administration is actively withdrawing grants and other support for scientific research that so much as references the climate. It’s even halted the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s work on stronger building codes to better withstand floods, hurricanes, and other disasters. Meanwhile, it’s pulling the plug — literally — on thousands of electric vehicle charging stations that were first installed as part of the last administration’s climate-fixing crusade.
Do you hear a slamming door? That’s the sound of your federal government choosing to ignore the growing danger that threatens to destroy us all. Surely if we ignore it, it will just go away on its own, right?
That see-no-EVs approach clearly did not work with our governor and Legislature voting to delete most mentions of climate change from state law. We’ve been battered by vicious hurricanes, destructive floods, and soaring property insurance costs.
The combination is driving something that once seemed unthinkable: People moving away from our coastline to someplace safer and thus less expensive.
The climate-risk research non-profit First Street Foundation is predicting more than 55 million Americans will voluntarily relocate within the U.S. to areas less vulnerable to climate risks by 2055. The exodus is starting with 5.2 million people moving this year, the organization reported.
If it’s happening to us civilians, you know it’s happening to the military too. But with the possible exception of the M*A*S*H units, they’re not nearly as mobile.
The most vulnerable forts
Adm. Green’s organization, the American Security Project, put out a report last year that assessed how Florida’s military bases are adapting to climate change.
It noted, for instance, how organizations such as the South Florida Regional Planning Council were partnering with the military to boost projects that would make the bases in that area more able to adapt to the worsening conditions. And it pointed to the Panhandle, where seven bases were working with local governments in analyzing what they need to be more resilient.
But even before that, Glickman pointed out to me, in 2019, the Department of Defense itself issued a report that named eight military bases throughout Florida that are increasingly vulnerable to climate change.
The list included Tyndall, of course, and Eglin. The rest of the list: MacDill AFB in Tampa, Hurlburt Field in the Panhandle, Homestead Air Reserve Base near Miami, Patrick Space Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Naval Air Station Key West, and the Blount Island Command, a Marine Corps support facility in Jacksonville.
The report also listed some of the ways the bases were trying to combat these dangerous climate alterations. For instance, Eglin and MacDill “partnered with local groups to address persistent coastal erosion around their installations. Oyster shells collected from local restaurants became the foundation for oyster reefs to create a living shoreline.”
Meanwhile, Patrick “imposes strict Florida Building Code hurricane requirements and finished floor elevations for all new construction based on flood plain and storm surge data.”
The report noted that the department “realizes the need to better understand rates of coastal erosion, natural and built flood protection infrastructure, and inland and littoral flood planning and mitigation.”
That was something it would work on for the future, until Hegseth closed the door on thinking about the future.
Of course, what was missing from this report was any mention of what they were doing about the causes of climate change.
The global thermostat
That the new defense secretary would take such an indefensible position is no surprise.
“The Defense Department is not in the business of climate change, solving the global thermostat,” Hegseth told reporters in an interview earlier this month. “We’re in the business of deterring and winning wars.”
And during his confirmation hearing last month, he told senators that he wouldn’t let his underlings lift a finger to counter climate change.
“My secretary of the Navy, should I be confirmed, sir, will not be focused on climate change in the Navy, just like the Secretary of the Air Force won’t be focused on algae powered fighter jets, or the Secretary of the Army will not be focused on electric powered tanks,” he said.
But that’s a false choice, Petey Baby.
What if running tanks as electric vehicles saves the taxpayers a lot of money on fuel costs? Or what if algae power fighter jets turn out to be able to travel farther and carry heavier firepower? What if those are better choices not just for the environment but for an efficient fighting force?
Sticking to strictly fossil fuels to run your weaponry guarantees not only that your forces continue to put out pollution that hurts their own health. It also guarantees that your coastal military bases will continue having to cope with the dangers of rising sea levels, big storm surges, and more intense hurricanes.
So, here’s my suggestion, Mr. Secretary. If you want to close your eyes and pretend that your forts and ports and air bases are totally secure from the elements, I think you should add one important feature to all of them.
I think you need to start planting a LOT of persimmon trees. Then when the water rises, everyone can climb one and continue shouting PEW PEW PEW!
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.