The term “climate change” was included for the first time in the latest revision of the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (Joint Publication 1-02), published last week.
Climate change is officially defined by DoD as “Variations in average weather conditions that persist over multiple decades or longer that encompass increases and decreases in temperature, shifts in precipitation, and changing risk of certain types of severe weather events.”
The new entry in the DoD Dictionary reflects a growing awareness of the actual and potential impacts of climate change on military operations.
The definition was originally proposed in the January 2016 DoD Directive 4715.21 on Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience.
“The DoD must be able to adapt current and future operations to address the impacts of climate change in order to maintain an effective and efficient U.S. military,” the January directive stated.
In anticipation of future known and unknown health security threats, including new pandemics, biothreats, and climate-related health emergencies, our answers need to be much faster, cheaper, and less disruptive to other operations.
To unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence within the Department of Health and Human Services, an AI Corps should be established, embedding specialized AI experts within each of the department’s 10 agencies.
Investing in interventions behind the walls is not just a matter of improving conditions for incarcerated individuals—it is a public safety and economic imperative. By reducing recidivism through education and family contact, we can improve reentry outcomes and save billions in taxpayer dollars.
The U.S. government should establish a public-private National Exposome Project (NEP) to generate benchmark human exposure levels for the ~80,000 chemicals to which Americans are regularly exposed.