military

national security/shutterstock

Admiral Locklear as a strong voice on climate change issues might surprise some. That a four-star flag officer is publicly stating that climate change dominates the long-term strategic discussions in his command matters.[read more]

Biofuels via Shutterstock

When it comes to reducing the military’s dependence on oil, senators from both sides of the aisle have the Department of Defense’s back.By striking down a pair of shortsighted amendments to the military’s annual spending bill, the Senate this week gave a green light to the DoD to pursue the biofuel initiatives senior military leaders say...[read more]

Climate change and global warming deniers deny, but there’s one important group of decision makers that are taking the reality of global warming seriously: Arctic region military leaders.[read more]

Corinne Schoch asks if militarizing climate change might harm those communities most affected by the problem *** Once upon a time, climate change was  strictly an environment and development issue. Today, it has become a matter of national and international security. Efforts to link climate change with violent conflict may not be...[read more]

The Defense Department recently released its widely anticipated roadmap to transform operational energy security. Energy security has become a strategic as well as an operational imperative for U.S. national security.[read more]

  It’s worth noting a pair of recent developments on the Defense Department energy front. One is a useful reminder of what DOD can achieve now with the proper support, and a cause for optimism; the other, more pessimistic, illustrates the pressing need for accelerated innovation in the alternative fuels industry more broadly...[read more]

People hear climate change through different concerns. Some hear threats to the environment, others to people, and others still to national security. (Of course, there is overlap.) For those in the national security category, the National Security Journalism Initiative has created Global Warning. Water shortages in Yemen Go to A...[read more]

When you’ve seen your soldiers die protecting a fuel convoy, you know that the need for clean energy and efficiency is real, urgent, and transcends political squabbling. This Sunday four high-ranking officials from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines spoke out in support of a clean energy future for America. They published an op-ed in...[read more]

I was on WSJ.com's LunchBreak with Wendy Bounds today talking about how the Department of Defense has become a true energy innovator and the potential benefits of an energy efficiency makeover of the Empire State building. Here is a link to the video on wsj.com: The Green Skeptic on LunchBreak        [read more]

For those of you who did not know, our military spends a lot of money to support itself. One of its biggest expenses is its huge appetite for energy. Specifically, according to Colonel Dan Nolan, “The DOD is the world’s largest oil consumer,” accounting for 25% of the globe’s consumption. Due to that need for oil, Colonel Nolan says that...[read more]

At this week's Army/Air Force Energy Forum, the military signaled a higher priority on renewable energy and energy efficiency.[read more]

The U.S. military uses more energy than any single organization in the world, at a cost of $15 billion a year for operations across the globe, with almost all those dollars going to fuel costs. But that dependence has a human cost. More than 3,000 U.S. soldiers or contractors have been killed or wounded in fuel convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan – 60 percent of all combat deaths in the two wars. energyNOW! correspondent Lee Patrick Sullivan explored how the Department of Defense is working to cut fossil-fuel dependency and improve energy efficiency while maintaining its tactical edge to save American lives on the battlefield.[read more]

When it comes to discussing the value and power of a clean-energy future, in a way that touches core values and life-experiences of a good share of Americans, perhaps it is time to think and speak UMW.  No … not the United Mine Workers.  Instead,  when we think UMW and energy, we should turn to three “institutions”...[read more]

This is the Part III of my review of Doug Koplow, Union of Concerned Scientists report titled, Nuclear Power: Still not viable without subsidies. Part I offered some definition of subsidies, and noted that very large government subsidies to the renewable power industry had not made renewable generated electricity cheap. Part I noted...[read more]

 This post was co-authored with Lt. Gen. Norman R. Seip, (USAF-RET)Congress is debating the Defense Department authorization bill, the legislation that allocates the $700 billion needed to fund our military through 2012.Wrapped deep in the legislation is an important issue we can all relate to - fuel costs. The DOD consumes 2...[read more]