34. Own The Heat: DoD Climate Change Action with Mr. Richard Kidd

Mr. Richard G. Kidd IV, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Environment & Energy Resilience, provides policy and governance for programs and activities that enable resilience and cyber-secure energy for weapon systems and installations. This includes budgetary, policy, and management oversight of programs related to climate change, compliance with environmental laws, prevention of pollution, management of natural and cultural resources, and cleanup of contaminated sites, as well as energy resilience, risk, and performance. Prior to his current position, Mr. Kidd served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Strategic Integration where he led the strategy development, resource requirements, and overall business transformation processes for the Office within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment. He was responsible for developing and monitoring performance metrics for the Army’s installation management community as well as leading a strategic effort to examine options for future Army installations.

In today’s podcast, Mr. Kidd addresses threats to the force from climate change, operating conditions in a worsening climate, and how the DoD can be proactive in this existential fight. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our discussion:

• Climate change presents an inevitable threat to world peace, economic prosperity, and capital investment. It is likely to impact the U.S. military in three major ways:
  
  
  • Increased Operational Requirements: Climate change will overwhelm the governing capacity of weak states, increasing conflict and extremism abroad and subsequently increasing foreign threats. Domestically, demand for the Army National Guard, the Corps of Engineers, and civil authorities will increase in responding to and preventing damage from severe weather.
    
    
  • Increased Vulnerability of Installations: Prevalence and intensity of floods, erosion, drought, fires, wind shear, and sea level rise will grow as a result of climate change, threatening military installations.
    
    
  • Degradation of Performance: Performance parameters of both people and equipment will be challenged as they are forced to operate in extreme temperatures. Keeping Soldiers alive in an increasingly hostile climate will challenge the U.S. Army.
    
    
• U.S. adversaries will craft strategic narratives to criticize U.S. action, or inaction, on climate change. China has heralded, and indeed, ‘weaponized’ its own prioritization of climate change policy and technology development, highlighting its actions in contrast to previous U.S. failures to engage in the Paris Accords. Despite this element of competition, the United States should cooperate with China on climate change policy, given the two nations’ significant impact on the environment.
  
  
• Through a series of executive orders, and specifically via EO14008, the Biden administration has established