As of this week, the U.S. Department of Defense says it has stopped funding ongoing research on climate change as part of its discontinuation of 91 studies focused on global migration patterns, climate change impacts, and social trends.

In a news release Friday, the department said it would save more than $30 million in the first year.
On Sunday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X, “The @DeptofDefense does not do climate change crap. We do training and warfighting.”

The department said the ending of climate and other research “reflects the Department’s commitment to fiscal responsibility and ensuring every dollar invested in defense generates the greatest possible return for the American people.”
The military has a long history of concern about climate change. President George H.W. Bush first included climate change as a security issue in his National Security Strategy in 1991.

A 2016 report found that military bases along the East and Gulf Coast are at risk of losing large chunks of land as rising sea levels from man-made climate change swamp installations from New Hampshire to Florida.

By 2018, the Pentagon recognized sea level rise could be a threat to the 1,774 of its sites occupying 95,471 miles of the world’s coastline. That year the Secretary of Defense conducted a military-wide climate change/sea level assessment.