Sustainability and National Security

ple, the Army built a solar energy plant at Fort Irwin
to achieve energy independence or ‘zero gain’ from
commercial electrical sources, at the Army’s National
Training Center. The U.S. Air Force also constructed
a solar field at Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas, NV
to drastically reduce electrical energy consumption
at a large training installation. These kinds of actions
move a major global purchaser toward conservation,
reduce environmental degradation, and help mature
alternate energy technologies. It demonstrates an
awareness of environmental factors that never existed
in the Cold War defense establishment.
The U.S. military is adopting more green processes
and technologies, and more efficient resource use, but
this does not equate to a national policy for sustain-
ability. For example, the U.S. NSS uses the term ‘cli-
mate change’ throughout, and recognizes challenges
from climate change, but fails to mention the myriad
of other environmental threats to national security that
affect the U.S. Similarly, it is encouraging that the U.S.
Army has produced its second sustainability policy,
but at the same time the DOD’s 2010 Quadrennial De-
fense Review (QDR) acknowledges challenges of cli-
mate warming but says little about the strategic need
for environmental resource stewardship. The QDR
addresses international partnerships with respect to
environmental issues, but it does not specifically em-
phasize military-to-military sharing of environmental
protection issues and techniques.
Prospects for U.S. policy initiatives to resolve
pressing environmental problems internationally are
not high, but there is room for hope. Civilian agen-
cies are providing support for research on alternative
energy sources, and the Pentagon recognizes that cli-
mate change is a threat multiplier and is taking action