The US military has been worrying about climate change since the dawn of the Cold War, for good reason.

In 1957, Hollywood released the B-grade monster film, The Deadly Mantis, starring Mantis, a nightmare proportional prayer. Its premise: Melted Arctic ice releases a very hungry million-year-old megabug, and scientists and the US military must stop it.

The rampaging insects threaten the front post bases of the US Arctic forces, part of a key line of defense, before heading south and ending in New York City.

Yes, that’s over-fiction, but the film holds some truths about the concerns of the US military at the time, and now about its role in the stability of the Arctic and national security.

In the late 1940s, temperatures in the Arctic were warming, and the Cold War was intensifying. The US military was increasingly nervous about Soviet invasions in the Arctic. We built a base and radar station line. The film used real military footage of these polar regions.

But officials say what if snow fell and ice stuffed ice stalled American men and machines, weakening these Northern defenses?

In response to these concerns, the military created research facilities for snow, ice and permafrost. This is a research center specializing in the science and engineering of everything frozen: glacier runways, ice behavior, snow physics, past climate.

The military began to understand that climate change could not be ignored.

When I was writing my recent book on Greenland, Climate Science and the US military, I read government documents from the 1950s and 1960s and showed how the Pentagon poured support into climate and calm research to boost national defense.

Initially, military planners were aware of the threat to their own ability to protect the country. Over time, the US military will begin to see climate change both as a climate change itself and as a national security threat multiple.

Ice paths, ice cores, bases in ice sheets

Army snow and ice engineering in the 1950s allowed convoys of vehicles to which fleets were tracked to routinely cross the Greenland ice sheet.

In 1953, the Army built a secret surveillance site within an ice sheet equipped with Air Force radar units that watch Soviet missiles and aircraft 24/7, but there were also weather stations to understand the Arctic climate system.

The Army delved into the world’s first deep ice core from a base built inside Camp Century’s Greenland Ice Sheet. Its goal: Understand how the climate has changed in the past and know how it will change in the future.

The military was not shy about the success of climate change research. Henri Bader, an Army ice scientist, spoke about the voice of America. He investigated past climates, provided a new understanding of weather, and facilitated ice compensation as a way to understand past climate patterns and measure and predict what we live in today.

In the 1970s, laborious lab work at Camp Century extracted ancient air trapped in small bubbles in ice. The analysis of the gas revealed that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was low tens of thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution. Since 1850, carbon dioxide levels first creep up slowly and then accelerated rapidly. It was direct evidence that people’s actions, including burning coal and oil, are changing the composition of the atmosphere.

Since 1850, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have skyrocketed, warming global temperatures above 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 degrees Celsius). The past decade has been the hottest since recordkeeping began, and 2024 has held records. Climate change is currently affecting the whole planet, but especially the Arctic Circle, which is warming several times faster than the rest of the planet.

We consider climate change as a multiplier of threats

For decades, military leaders have debated climate change as a multiplier of threats and threats that could exacerbate instability and mass migration in already vulnerable regions of the world.

Climate change can burn storms, wildfires and rising seas that threaten important military bases. It puts personnel at risk as the heat rise, melts sea ice and creates new national security concerns in the Arctic. Climate change can contribute to instability and conflict when water and food shortages cause increased tensions across resources, internal and cross-borders, or mass migration.

The military understands that these threats cannot be ignored. As a Navy secretary, Carlos del Toro told the meeting in September 2024: “Climate resilience is power resilience.”

Consider Navy Station Norfolk. It is the world’s largest military port facility, located just above sea level on Virginia’s Atlantic coast. The sea level there rose over 1.5 feet in the last century, and it is on track to rise again by 2050 as glaciers around the world melt and warming seawater expands.

High currents have already caused delays in repair work, and large storms and their storm surges have damaged expensive equipment. The Navy worked to build sea walls and restore coastal sand dunes and wetlands to protect Virginia’s property, but the risk continues to increase.

In future plans, the Navy is taking scientists’ forecasts of sea level rise and increasing the strength of the hurricane to design more resilient facilities. By adapting to climate change, the US Navy avoids the fate of another well-known maritime force. Scandinavians are forced to abandon Greenland settlements that were flooded when sea levels rose about 600 years ago.

Climate change is expensive to ignore

As the impact of climate change increases both in frequency and magnitude, the cost of omissions is increasing. Most economists agree that it’s cheaper to act now than to deal with the outcome. However, over the past 20 years, political discourses about addressing the causes and effects of climate change have become increasingly politicized, partisan and hampered effective action.

In my view, the military’s approach to problem-solving and threat reduction provides a model for civil society to address climate change in two ways: reducing carbon emissions and adapting to the inevitable impacts on climate change.

The US military released more carbon to warm planets than Sweden, spending more than US$2 billion on energy in 2021. It accounts for more than 70% of the energy used by the federal government.

In that context, the adoption of alternative energy, including solar systems, microgrids and wind power, has economic and environmental implications. The US military is not separate from fossil fuels, not because of political agenda, but because of cost reductions, increased reliability, and the energy independence offered by alternatives.

As sea ice melted and Arctic temperatures rose, the polar regions became once again a strategic priority. Russia and China are focusing on important mineral deposits as they expand their Arctic shipping routes and become accessible. The military knows that climate change will affect national security, so it continues to take steps to address the threats it presents.

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