Pete Buttigieg is calling for the Department of Defense to take a leading role in combating climate change, and an internal group tasked with addressing the effects of climate change. He also proposed paying rural communities to help sequester carbon, creating a financial incentive to transition to renewable energy sources and lower emissions, ideas already popular in even the reddest of red states and counties despite heavy Republican opposition. But all this may seem to be at best tangential to the Department of Defense’s role. Yes, the massive agency overseeing all military operations does cite climate change as one of its biggest threats in the 21st century and says its effects threaten two thirds of its “mission critical” bases, as well as serve as incubators for worldwide conflicts and disease which are projected to kill nearly half a million people per year by the 2030s."