The US Navy has announced that it is jettisoning the Obama-era Climate Change Task Force.
The US Navy quietly shuttered a task force created under former President Barack Obama to prepare the military branch for the impact of global warming, reportedly saying the team was “no longer needed”.Its ending, which happened in March and was first reported on Tuesday by the environmental site E&E News, reflects a trend under Donald Trump in which federal agencies have shuttered operations designed to combat climate change nationwide and around the world.
Created in 2009, group was tasked with researching methods to adapt to security challenges caused by climate change.
It appears that the Navy didn’t pursue climate change policies as robustly as progressives in the Obama administration initially envisioned.
But the sense of urgency that flowed through the reports between 2010 and 2019 neither buoyed the Navy’s climate change group nor sparked major reforms across the armed forces.Retired Rear Adm. Jon White, who spearheaded Task Force Climate Change from 2012 to 2015, told E&E News that he saw “little evidence” that the research undertaken by the Navy and scientific community has even been implemented in any of the military’s environmental strategies.“Across all of the Department of Defense, it is hard for me to see that climate change is taken as seriously as it should be,” said White, now the president of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership.“The task force ended, in my opinion, without full incorporation of climate change
I suspect the non-politically motivated service men and women in our Navy has other priorities, such as new technology that can be used against adversaries.
The U.S. Navy has given General Dynamics the go-ahead to place the Knifefish drone system into production. The system, which uses drones to locate and map minefields, was in development for several years and at one point risked cancellation. The mine hunting system will be deployed on the service’s Littoral Combat Ships at a time when Iran is accused of mining the Persian Gulf.
Additionally, vessels and other military resources have been focused on protecting allies as well as our nation.
A United States Navy ship passed through the Taiwan Strait on Friday, in a show of support for the self-ruled island-state as tensions continue to rise between Washington and Beijing.Tensions between U.S. and China are set to escalate, already fraught because of the expansive Chinese claims on the South China Sea and the trade war between the two countries, after the USS Green Bay, an amphibious transport dock ship, sailed through the strategic 180 km-wide (112 miles) Taiwan Strait, which separates China from the island.
Finally, naval officials have been contending with the US Congress.
When the Navy revealed plans in February to retire the “supercarrier” USS Harry S. Truman early instead of paying for a $4 billion mid-life overhaul and nuclear refueling, bipartisan howls of outrage echoed across Capitol Hill, particularly from politicians in Virginia, where the carriers’ sole manufacturer resides. Two months later the proposed plan — rather than the carrier — was scrapped by an ostensible presidential fiat.That decision allowed the Truman to sail another day. But it leaves in place the bigger issue that a 2006 law mandating 12 operational supercarriers is too big a burden for the Navy, and arguably no longer makes sense. Indeed, a growing number of naval strategists worry that even as the cost of building and operating supercarriers continues to rise, they are growing increasingly vulnerable to advanced weapons proliferating across the globe, including Russian and Chinese systems specifically designed to target these huge vessels from hundreds of miles away.
Between the missions and global tensions, the US Navy has chosen wisely. This assessment is confirmed by the utter desolation of green justice warriors at this news.
If the sea level does rise, it will be because of all the liberal tears.
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