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Pete Buttigieg wants to create \xa0\u201ca Senior Cli\xadmate Secu\xadri\xadty role in the Sec\xadre\xadtary of Defense\u2019s office respon\xadsi\xadble for man\xadag\xading cli\xadmate secu\xadri\xadty risks.\u201d Elizabeth Warren insists \u201cour military can help lead the fight in combating climate change.\u201d And the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis tells us our primary goal should be to \u201cConfront Climate Risks to America\u2019s National Security and Restore America\u2019s Leadership on the International Stage.\u201d Everywhere we turn in liberal discourse, high-profile Democrats and center-left media are framing climate change as a \u201cnational security\u201d risk requiring national security solutions.

Politically, it\u2019s a clever enough frame. Like mocking Trump for being too nice to North Korea or latching on to anti-Trump Gold Star families, it\u2019s a cheap and easy way Democrats can drape themselves in the flag while pushing an ostensibly liberal position: We know it\u2019s a real threat because our military takes it seriously and they can be part of the solution - unlike those backwards Republicans we actually care what the generals are saying.

The primary problem with this is that the military speaks of climate change the way Davos discusses "inequality"\u2013\u2013in square quotes, as a threat to be managed and mitigated, not solved, and certainly not seen as a moral imperative to be addressed with issues of social justice and racism in mind. The Pentagon, by its own admission, views climate chaos as a risk factor among many, and its primary goal is to protect American capital and the U.S.-led global expansionist \xa0and extractivist economic order: two institutions fundamentally in need of overhaul if climate change is going to be reversed. Indeed turning to the US military to help solve climate crisis is like asking the police to solve institutional racism\u2013\u2013at best they can suppress protestors and secure property in the event of mass unrest, but the thing that needs overthrowing is the thing they\u2019re charged most with protecting.

One this second episode of our two-part series on climate chaos, we\u2019ll explain why the DoD\u2013\u2013and the military-industrial-complex more broadly\u2013\u2013cannot be a partner in the battle against climate change because their prime objective is protecting its main drivers of mindless growth and war, why demilitarization and global cooperation are key to curbing emissions in time, and why creeping militarism, nationalist economic policy in green \u201ctech\u201d and other forms of liberal jingoism are subtly shifting mainstream liberal climate policy to the Right.

Our guest is Lorah Steichen of the National Priorities Project.