The U.S. Navy officially scrapped a Biden-era “climate action” plan for the force on Tuesday, signifying the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to refocus the military towards warfighting.
“Today, I’m focusing on the warfighters first, and I’m rescinding the Biden administration’s climate action program. Our focus needs to be on lethality and our warfighters,” Navy Secretary John Phelan announced in a video message.
Released in May 2022, the Climate Action 2030 program contained a series of actions and goals the Department of the Navy (DON) has taken or planned to undertake to tackle what Biden Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro characterized as the “urgency of the climate crisis.” In the document’s opening foreword, Del Toro claimed the Navy and Marine Corps “are in the crosshairs of the climate crisis,” and that “[c]limate change is one of the most destabilizing forces of our time, exacerbating other national security concerns and posing serious readiness challenges.”
The action plan identified two “performance goals,” one of which included the DON’s stated aim of reducing “greenhouse gas emissions and draw[ing] greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere to stabilize ecosystems, and achieve, as an enterprise, [President Biden’s] commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050, as well as other targets.”
In order to achieve these objectives and comply with a 2021 climate-related executive order by Biden, the DON laid out a series of targets for the branch to work towards in the years ahead. This included commitments to “[a]cquiring 100 percent zero-emission vehicles by 2035, including 100 percent zero-emission light-duty vehicle acquisitions by 2027” and “[a]chieving a 50 percent reduction in emissions from buildings by 2032.”
“There is no time to waste. Climate change is already impacting our Department, our Nation, and the world in significant ways, and the threat will only intensify in the coming decades,” the Climate Action 2030 plan reads. “The DON has made meaningful progress, and now the magnitude and urgency of the climate crisis demand that the Department accelerate our efforts, work together, and think creatively to arrive at new and expanded solutions.”
The now-rescinded program was but one of several efforts by the Biden administration to integrate leftists’ climate alarmist agenda into military operations.
In May 2021, for example, the U.S. Army announced it would begin prioritizing so-called “climate change threats” as part of its strategic planning operations and threat analysis. Similar to the Navy’s climate plan, the Army’s memo classified “climate change” as “a serious threat to U.S. National security interests and defense objectives.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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