Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Defense Department shares the president-elect’s disdain for climate science.
Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has a long history of distorting and denying climate research while on the air at the cable news channel. That tracks with Trump’s dismissal of global warming as a “hoax.”
Hegseth, 44, has called climate science a “religion.” He said it shows liberals want to “play God.” And he has described climate research as a vast left-wing conspiracy to impose government controls on American society.
“It’s all about control for them,” he said in 2019 on the “Fox & Friends” program. “That’s why climate change is the perfect enemy. They get to control your life to deal with it no matter what’s happening.”
While each administration brings new ideas and policies to its leadership of the military, the Defense Department long has included climate research in its planning and threat assessment documents — including under Trump. Climate science has been used to identify national security threats, plan for more extreme storms and prepare for harsher combat situations.
Hegseth could change that — and not for the better, said one former defense official.
Losing insight into future and changing conditions would make American troops less prepared, said Sherri Goodman, a former deputy undersecretary of Defense and the author of “Threat Multiplier: Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security.”
“The Department of Defense work on climate is all about reducing risk from climate threats that our forces face around the world,” said Goodman, now a senior fellow at the Wilson Center. “And that’s everything from infrastructure in Florida that’s more at risk from hurricanes and sea-level rise, to our troops who have to operate in hotter temperatures, to an opening Arctic and a more aggressive China that is using climate as a wedge issue against our allies.”
Hegseth’s nomination stunned much of Washington and the military community when Trump announced it Tuesday night. Hegseth, who was awarded two Bronze Stars, is a Princeton graduate who joined the National Guard in 2002 and left in 2021. The “Fox & Friends” weekend host has little experience running a large organization, much less one with about 3 million employees.
“Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First,” Trump said in a statement.
Hegseth has called for an end to “woke” policies in the military, which in his view, includes diversity and inclusion efforts. Based on his history of attacking climate science, that area of military research and planning likely will be a target too.
“For the past three years, the Pentagon — across all three branches — has embraced the social justice messages of gender equity, racial diversity, climate stupidity, vaccine worship, and the LGBTQIA+ alphabet soup in their recruiting pushes,” Hegseth wrote in his 2024 book, “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.”
Past climate research at the Pentagon has informed decisions about the vulnerability of military installations and the resilience of infrastructure in a warming planet. It’s helped flag possible hot spots, including areas were droughts could lead to unrest or fights over water. And climate science has informed military planning around its own fossil fuel consumption and improving energy efficiency, which can cut costs and improve battlefield planning.
The list of what climate-related programs could be cut will not be as extensive as some in the incoming administration may believe, said John Conger, director emeritus of the Center for Climate and Security and senior adviser to the Council on Strategic Risks.
“If you’re looking for the things that are only climate related and not mission-assurance related, not resilience related and not operational warfighting related, you know you’re going to have a very short list,” he said.
In the eight years he has appeared on Fox, Hegseth often sounded like Trump when talking about climate change. Trump has mocked and dismissed climate science for years.
“It used to be global cooling,” Hegseth said in 2022. “Then it was global warming, then it was, of course, climate change, so anything that happens — if it’s too hot, too cold, raining too much, not raining enough — we’re always to blame for it. We’re gods in control of the weather.”
In another Fox News segment that could provide a window into how Hegseth, if confirmed, would treat climate threats as Defense secretary, he mocked the idea that a warmer planet could drive mass migration. He included such claims as part of “a laundry list of things the left blames climate change for.”
In 2022, as Hurricane Ian hit Florida, Hegseth dismissed the idea that hurricanes may be intensifying more quickly due to warmer ocean temperatures, which scientists have tied to climate change.
“They’re intensifying, and therefore, it’s got to be climate change. It’s the default position when anything changes,” he said. “And at that point, you lose me because you’re not making a scientific argument — you’re making a religious argument.”
