Trump Admin Moves to Purge “Climate Zealotry” From the Defense Department
The Department of Defense (DOD) is spearheading an effort to purge various climate change efforts from its agency.
The Pentagon canceled multiple climate change-related studies over the past week, Politico’s E&E News reported Friday. The move comes as President Donald Trump aims to overturn various Biden-era energy and environmental policies adopted by the federal government.
Additionally, the DOD has been leading a weeks-long effort to sift through outside contracts for the phrase “climate” with the intent to scrap any work related to climate change, two former Pentagon officials told E&E News. DOD contracts accounting for billions of dollars have previously been spent on promoting “climate action.”
The Pentagon announced on March 7 that it was canceling 91 social science-related studies, several of which involved the impacts of climate change. In its press release, the Pentagon said that studies such as “The Language of Parasocial Influence and the Emergence of Extremism,” “Weaponized Conspiracies” and “The Climate-Food-Urbanization Nexus and the Precursors of Instability in Africa,” would all be on the chopping block. Officials estimated the discontinuation of the studies would result in roughly $30 million in sayings.
While the announcement prompted massive backlash from some Democratic lawmakers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended the changes and slammed Pentagon’s past climate initiatives Sunday in a post on X.
“The @DeptofDefense does not do climate change crap,” Hegseth wrote in the social media post. “We do training and warfighting.”
Other federal government agencies have begun to dismantle climate change-related efforts in recent weeks, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is reportedly considering scrapping any mention of climate-related terms in its official documents.
Former President Joe Biden led a massive push to implement climate and environmental justice initiatives across the U.S. government as part of his broader climate agenda.
The former president signed two key pieces of climate legislation, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which earmarked billions of dollars for climate change research, grants and funding for “green” energy industries.
The DOD has previously backed numerous climate and environmental efforts over the past several years, including a Strategic Management Plan, introduced in March 2023, that involved prioritizing climate change as well as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in short-term goals to supplement broader strategic objectives.
Moreover, an environmental provision featured in the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act includes an obscure environmental initiative to “manage, control and interdict the coconut rhinoceros beetle” — an invasive species of insect that bore holes into the canopies of palm trees — “on military installations in Hawaii.”
Notably, former Defense Department press secretary John Kirby told reporters in November 2021 that China and climate change were “equally important” threats to U.S. national security.
The Trump administration has taken a sharply contrasting position on climate spending, particularly within the DOD.
Upon his return to the White House, Trump established the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), spearheaded by Elon Musk, to weed out wasteful spending across the federal government. DOGE has thus far enacted mass layoffs across several government agencies in an attempt to cut costs.
“We’re working with the Department of Government Efficiency—DOGE—to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse, cutting fat and redundancies at headquarters so we can save your dollars and reinvest them wisely,” Hegseth said in a video posted to X on Feb. 20.
“The Department is working closely with DOGE to identify efficiencies and savings across the department on behalf of taxpayers while we restore the warrior ethos and refocus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Climate zealotry and other woke chimeras of the Left are not part of that core mission.”
