President Donald Trump is expected to sign the annual defense budget bill, which calls climate change a threat to national security.
The National Defense Authorization Act states that climate change is a threat to the Pentagon’s 128 military bases, and now Trump is expected to sign the legislation, despite downplaying and poking fun at climate change in the past, The Washington Examiner reports.
Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and said he’s “not a big believer in man-made climate change.” He’s also stated that “nobody really knows” whether climate change is real.
The final version of the bill mandates the Pentagon produce a report about which bases are most at risk for the effects of climate change and what steps, if any, should be taken to mitigate the damage.
Trump has made of fun of climate change in the past, however, both Democrats and Republicans seem convinced of the phenomenon enough to slide it into the defense bill.
In fact, although Congress has ordered a report in the past, this will be the first report to force the Pentagon to state how it will protect its military installations and what the cost of those efforts will be.
Democratic Rep. Jim Langevin of Rhode Island first forwarded the legislation earlier this year.
“It should come as no surprise that we are discussing climate change as a national security threat during consideration of our annual defense policy bill in the Armed Services Committee,” Langevin said in June. “Numerous leaders from our defense and intelligence communities, appointed by both Democratic and Republican administrations, have acknowledged that a volatile climate is a serious threat to our readiness and to our long-term defense posture.”
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