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US Pacific Command, Climate Change and Collaborative Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

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While organizers mobilize across the globe for history's biggest climate march in New York on September 21, strikingly large numbers of Americans - and an even bigger share of their political representatives - remain quiet, doubtful or even in denial about climate change. But the US military, especially in the Pacific, is neither uncertain nor passive. The August 10 Stars and Stripes tells us that US Pacific Command (PACOM) is also “not waiting on politics” in responding to climate change. Brigadier General Mark McLeod, former head of PACOM's Logistics, Engineering and Security Cooperation directorate describes why. He points out that 70 percent of global storms are in the Pacific and that climate change's impacts are already having military consequences. He dismisses the denialism rampant in American politics and society with:” Call it climate change, call it the big blue rabbit, I don't give a hoot what you call it —— the military has to respond to those kinds of things.”

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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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Copyright © The Authors 2014