Pentagon climate plan: war-fighting in hotter, harsher world

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new Pentagon climate plan calls for incorporating the realities of a hotter, harsher Earth at every level in the U.S. military. Thursday’s recommendations focus on making worsening climate extremes a mandatory part of strategic, tactical and operational defense planning. That includes things like training troops how to secure water supplies and treat heat injuries in a hotter world, and guarding against equipment failures in the extremes of heat and cold. The Defense Department is the world’s largest institutional consumer of climate-wrecking fossil fuels. President Joe Biden ordered it and dozens of other agencies to overhaul their planning to prepare for worsening global warming.