"Hotter summers in Iraq are blasting soldiers sitting inside armored vehicles. Flooding is threatening the world’s largest navy base. Russian submarines are prowling the melting Arctic. Now NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wants to make global warming a major focus of the military alliance’s strategy and planning, pushing environmental issues to the center as a security threat.
The new push at NATO, which was approved Tuesday by alliance foreign ministers at a gathering at the headquarters in Brussels, signals a significant shift for the organization, which has traditionally guarded against threats from Russia and other political actors around the world.
Now, NATO will also try to incorporate a different sort of danger into its work, as climate change upends old security assumptions and creates new risks for democratic societies. Stoltenberg, a former U.N. special envoy on climate change, said he hopes leaders will use a summit later this year to pledge to make their militaries carbon-neutral by 2050."
Michael Birnbaum and Missy Ryan report for the Washington Post March 23, 2021.
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