The Patriot Post® · The Navy's Climate Change Agenda

The United States Navy has long ruled the seas. That reputation was earned over many years, and while the Navy remains a formidable force on the world’s oceans, that strength may be waning more quickly than any of us realize.

China’s military has been on the rise in recent years, but instead of keeping pace with China’s emergence as a global sea power and making sure America stays on the cutting edge of technology, our Navy has another priority: climate change.

“The Department of the Navy is stepping forward with Climate Action 2030, a broad, multi-pronged approach,” explains the U.S. Department of Defense website. “The Navy is working to improve efficiency of ships, electrifying vehicles and greatly reducing emissions.” Furthermore, “The Navy is also funding efforts to help restore coral reefs and is eager to pursue further efforts on coral reef research, regrowth and even creation.”

Coral reef research? Electric vehicles? This is the Navy’s answer to China’s explosive growth as a naval power?

Unfortunately, the current Navy leadership thinks so.

“China, which is rapidly becoming the dominant marine force, doesn’t give a damn about adapting to climate change,” says journalist Daniel Greenfield, “except when it comes to peddling its junk solar panels assembled by slave labor to woke companies that will resell them at a massive markup while gobbling up tax credits because when we go ‘green,’ it only weakens us and strengthens our enemies.”

Indeed, while the West goes green, China continues building coal plants. “China became the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide in 2006 and is now responsible for more than a quarter of the world’s overall greenhouse gas emissions,” reports the BBC.

Greenfield adds: “While our military brass obsessed over diversity, equity and inclusion, the PRC turned the South China Sea into its own private backyard, enabling it to potentially cut off traffic to the United States. China has built up chains of islands studded with its naval outposts so that its fighter jets and ant-ship and anti-aircraft missiles now encompass not only the coasts of Taiwan and China, but much of the coastlines of everything from Thailand to Malaysia to the Philippines.”

While current Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro publicly recognizes the threat from China’s navy, he and the Biden administration have planned to reduce the number of U.S. warships.

“The Biden administration released its proposed budget for 2024, which calls for shrinking the Navy fleet even though most military experts and senior Navy officers have called for more ships to deter China’s larger fleet,” Fox News reports. “For several years now, the Navy has set a goal of having 355 manned ships. But, for the last three years, the Biden administration has proposed shrinking the fleet below the roughly 298 ships it has available now, instead of increasing it toward a 355-ship goal.”

Meanwhile, the People’s Liberation Army is expected to have 400 ships by 2025.

But not to worry — President Joe Biden has mandated that each military service have a sustainability officer. Meredith Berger, assistant secretary of the Navy, talks about LED lighting and new salt-resistant paint for naval vessels.

That sure won’t deter China in a naval battle. But hey, if we can’t win, at least the paint on our ships won’t peel.

Even The Atlantic, not exactly a pro-military publication, warns: “It is time for the United States to think and act, once again, like a seapower state. As the naval historian Andrew Lambert has explained, a seapower state understands that its wealth and its might principally derive from seaborne trade, and it uses instruments of sea power to promote and protect its interests. To the degree possible, a seapower state seeks to avoid direct participation in land wars, large or small.”

That’s a clear, sensible assessment of the current state of the U.S. Navy compared to the gobbledygook in the Climate Action 2030 plan.

Assuming the Navy transitions to an electric vehicle fleet, reduces building emissions by 50%, implements nature-based erosion solutions, and diverts solid waste from landfills (all prominent objectives in its Climate Action plan), how will any of this prevent China from dominating the seas in the 21st century?

Of course, it will do nothing to combat China’s rise as the world’s new sea power.

A century from now, historians will scratch their heads and wonder how America could have been so naïve to give it all away. By then, maybe our leaders will have learned their lesson about the climate change religion.

Then again, maybe it will be too late to do anything about it.