The United States Department of Defense (DOD) has become one of the primary federal agencies in the fight against climate change. Their success in implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation programs is due to their use of a “mission-focused framework” in which action on climate change is taken exclusively in the context of military readiness and lethality. This framework isolates DOD’s actions from political change, reducing the potential for political contention to affect DOD’s actions. The mission-focused framework may serve as a model for other federal agencies. This article first establishes the context for DOD’s actions around the environment and natural resource management by outlining the traditional federal approach to the environment, the evolution in DOD-environment interactions, and how climate change threatens the mission readiness of DOD. Then three arguments are presented: 1) DOD has become one of the primary environment/natural resource management agencies, 2) DOD is well-suited to make and implement climate change policy, and 3) DOD uses a mission-focused framework to take consistent and progressive climate action. Finally, potential beneficial applications of the mission-focused framework in other divisions of the Executive and Legislative branches of government are discussed.
