Sharon Burke on How the US Military Is Planning for Climate Change

Sharon Burke was interviewed about how climate change is impacting the US military: 

Climate change is impacting the U.S. military in two major ways, explains Sharon Burke in this week’s podcast.

Burke, who served as the first assistant secretary of defense for operational energy from 2010 to 2014 and is now with the New America Foundation, says the Department of Defense has done a lot to consider how changing climate conditions will affect their equipment and facilities, but also their operations.

“The Department of Defense is a very large land owner in the U.S. and around the world,” Burke says. Facilities in arid climates such as those found in the Mojave Desert and the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico are already seeing a variety of climate effects, including higher temperatures and drier conditions making it harder to train.

The military has also changed building codes, she says, “so that if you want to build new military construction, you have to take climate change into consideration.”