How We Survive

After spending nearly a year exploring U.S. national security and climate change, some big questions remain: Should the American military be smaller? Is that even possible? And what about the upcoming election; Could it upend the military’s climate focus? In our last episode of the season, host Kai Ryssdal reflects on his past and explores the possibilities for the military’s future.  

Imagine it’s 2044. We’ve failed to control global warming and temperatures have risen 2 degrees Celsius. Northern South America is suffering from extreme heat, mudslides, agricultural collapse and rolling blackouts. Governments are falling apart and 2 million people are on the move. If you were president of the United States, what would you do?

The U.S. military has used simulated scenarios, called wargames, for decades to help prepare for future threats. These days, climate change is the focus of some Pentagon wargames. In this episode, we look at how wargaming became a tool for the military to anticipate threats, and host Kai Ryssdal steps into the Oval Office to play out a climate crisis set in 2044, with help from two retired high-level military officials and a professional game designer.

On Jan. 20, a 20-foot wave crashed into a community center on a U.S. military base in the Marshall Islands. The wave broke down the door, smashed windows and even dragged people under. Waves and storm-driven flooding aren’t uncommon in the Marshall Islands. But this one hit a base that’s vital to U.S. national security. It’s where the United States conducts missile testing. Very few people ever see this remote and fortified location on a tiny island halfway between Hawaii and Australia. Host Kai Ryssdal treks across the Pacific to find out how our military will respond to the existential climate threat, and asks: What do rich countries and major carbon emitters like the U.S. owe to the people and nations bearing the brunt of the climate crisis?

The Department of Defense is an enormous consumer of energy, using 73 million barrels of fuel annually. An F-22 Raptor, a fighter jet, burns 15 gallons of gas every minute when cruising. And more than a third of the DoD’s emissions come from powering its estimated 750 bases around the world.

On the flip side, the Pentagon has an enormous budget, about $850 billion a year. So how is it leveraging some of that money and power to work on some of our biggest climate problems?

In this episode, host Kai Ryssdal takes a look at some of the promising tech solutions that the military is investing in to make it more resilient and reduce emissions. We tour a warehouse in New York making sustainable aviation fuel, visit a microgrid at the original Top Gun school in California and swing by the E-ring, where the higher-ups in the Pentagon work.