Medals for a Climate-Wracked Century
I can only speculate, of course, about the particular contingencies that will lead to the designation of special military insignia for participation in the climate battles of the decades ahead. Nevertheless, it's possible, by extrapolating from recent events, to imagine what these might look like, even though the Department of Defense (DoD) does not yet award such ribbons.
Consider, for example, the Pentagon's response to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, all of which hit parts of the United States between August and September 2017. In reaction to those mega-storms, which battered eastern Texas, southern Florida, and virtually all of Puerto Rico, the DoD deployed tens of thousands of active-duty troops to assist relief operations, along with a flotilla of naval vessels and a slew of helicopters and cargo aircraft. In addition, to help restore power and water supplies in Puerto Rico, it mobilized 11,400 active-duty and National Guard troops -- many of whom were still engaged in such activities six months after Maria's disastrous passage across that island. Given the extent of the military's involvement in such rescue-and-relief operations -- often conducted under hazardous conditions -- it would certainly have been fitting had the Pentagon awarded a special service ribbon for participation in those triple-hurricane responses, using colors drawn from the Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rican flags.
Another example would have been Super Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013, which pulverized parts of the Philippines, a long-time ally, killing more than 6,000 people and destroying a million homes. With the Filipino government essentially immobilized by the scale of the disaster, President Barack Obama ordered the U.S. military to mount a massive relief operation, which it called Damayan. At its peak, it involved some 14,000 U.S. military personnel, a dozen major warships -- including the carrier USS George Washington -- and 66 aircraft. This effort, too, deserved recognition in the form of a distinctive service ribbon.
Now, let's jump a decade or more into the future. By the early 2030s, with global temperatures significantly higher than they are today, extreme storms like Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Haiyan are likely to be occurring more frequently and to be even more powerful. With sea levels rising worldwide and ever more people living in low-lying coastal areas around the globe, the damage caused by such extreme weather is bound to increase exponentially, regularly overwhelming the response capabilities of civilian authorities. The result: ever increasing calls on the armed forces to provide relief-and-rescue services. "More frequent and/or more severe extreme weather events... may require substantial involvement of DoD units, personnel, and assets in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) abroad and in Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA) at home," the Pentagon was already informing Congress back in 2015.
Historically, it has viewed such activities as a "lesser included case"; that is, the military has not allocated specific troops or equipment for HA/DR and DSCA operations ahead of time, but used whatever combat forces it had on hand for such missions. Typical, for instance, was the use of an aircraft carrier already in the region to deal with the results of Super Typhoon Haiyan. As such events only grow in intensity and frequency, however, the Pentagon will find it increasingly necessary to establish dedicated units like the hypothetical "Coastal Relief and Rescue Command" (whose insignia General Gonzalez and Admiral Brixton were wearing in "2032").
This will become essential as multiple coastal storms coincide with other extreme events, including massive wildfires or severe inland flooding, creating a "complex catastrophe" that could someday threaten the economy and political cohesion of the United States itself.
"Complex Catastrophes"
The DoD first envisioned the possibility of a "complex catastrophe" in 2012, after Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast that October. Sandy, as many readers will recall, knocked out power in lower Manhattan and disrupted commerce and transportation throughout the New York Metropolitan Area. On that occasion, the DoD mobilized more than 14,000 military personnel for relief-and-rescue operations and provided a variety of critical support services. In the wake of that storm, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta commanded his staff to consider the possibility of even more damaging versions of the same and how these might affect the military's future roles and mission.
The Pentagon's response came in a 2013 handbook, Strategy for Homeland Defense and Defense Support of Civil Authorities, warning the military to start anticipating and preparing for "complex catastrophes," which, in an ominous breathful, it defined as "cascading failures of multiple, interdependent, critical, life-sustaining infrastructure sectors [causing] extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, environment, economy, public health, national morale, response efforts, and/or government functions." While recognizing that civil authorities must remain the first line of defense in such calamities, the handbook indicated that, if civil institutions are overwhelmed -- an increasingly likely reality -- the armed forces must be prepared to assume many key governmental functions, possibly for an extended period of time.
In the future, in other words, all senior commanders and other officers can expect to participate in major HA/DR and DSCA operations during their careers, possibly involving extended deployments and hazardous missions. In 2017, for instance, many soldiers were deployed in Houston for rescue operations after Hurricane Harvey had drenched the region and, in the process, were exposed to toxic chemicals in the knee-deep floodwaters because some of the area's petrochemical plants had been inundated. Looting has also been a recurring feature of major weather disasters, sometimes involving gunfire or other threats to life.
Increasingly frequent and savage wildfires in the American West are another climate-related peril likely to impinge on the military's future operational posture. As temperatures rise and forests dry out, fires, once started, often spread with a daunting rapidity, overpowering firefighters and other local defenses. California and the Pacific Northwest are at particular risk, as severe drought has been a persistent problem in the region, while people have moved their homes ever deeper into the forests. In recent years, the National Guard in those states has been called up on numerous occasions to help battle such fires and active-duty troops have increasingly been deployed on the fire lines as well.
The proliferation of ever more severe wildfires in the American West -- combined with similar devastating outbreaks in Australia and the rainforests of Indonesia and the Amazon -- have led to a global shortage of the giant air tankers used to fight them. In November 2019, for example, Australia was pleading for the loan of water tankers still needed in California to cope with a deadly fire season that had lasted far longer than usual. It's easy to imagine, then, that the U.S. Air Force will one day be compelled by Congress to establish a dedicated fleet of water tankers to fight fires around the country -- what I chose to call the U.S. Firefighting Brigade in my own futuristic imaginings.
Foreign Climate Wars
Yet another climate-related mission likely to be undertaken by U.S. forces in the years ahead will be armed intervention in foreign civil conflicts triggered by severe drought, food shortages, or other resource scarcities. American military and intelligence analysts believe that rising world temperatures will result in widespread shortages of food and water in crucial areas of the planet like the Middle East, only exacerbating preexisting hostilities to the breaking point. When governments fail to respond in an efficient and equitable manner, conflict is likely to erupt, possibly resulting in state collapse, warlordism, and mass migrations -- outcomes that could pose a significant threat to global stability. (Keep in mind, for instance, that the horrific Syrian civil war, still ongoing, was preceded by an "extreme drought," the worst in modern times and believed to be climate-change induced.)
"Climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security," the DoD stated in its 2015 report to Congress, "contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources such as food and water."
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