The U.S. Armed Forces were not designed to protect us from disease, natural disaster or other associated environmental difficulties, but the military must be prepared to operate in these environments to defend America’s national interests. USMA: Educating future Army officers about energy policy and climate change. One way this is happening is in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point through a Congressional Simulation Exercise (SIMEX) focused on energy policy that actively explores the Army’s relationship to climate change. The SIMEX requires cadets to draft, debate, and attempt to pass a comprehensive energy reform bill. Cadets role-play elected members of the House of Representatives, interest group lobbyists, journalists from various media outlets, and presidential advisors. They are required to think critically and creatively, while developing a law-making strategy and debating the merits of energy policy among their peers. Cadets focus their efforts on four policy areas including the environmental impacts of expanded fossil fuel use, the costs and benefits of sustainable energy investment strategies, the viability of a national carbon emissions cap and trade system, and basic budget and funding mechanisms for their choices. Additionally, cadets prepare for the exercise by participating in lectures concerning the science of hydraulic fracturing, the patterns of commercial electricity use, and the ethics of environmentalism.
The SIMEX creates the opportunity for instructors and cadets to generate critical institutional ideas and sensitizes the current and future leaders of the Army to the challenge of climate change. While these simulations do not directly impact national policy or Pentagon plans, they are affecting the cadets’ and faculty’s modes of thinking while also incorporating key policymakers and senior Academy staff into the energy reform discussion. Just last year, staff members of the House Armed Service Committee along with West Point’s Superintendent, Commandant, and Dean all attended a SIMEX. The cadets also benefited from several former senior government officials including: Jason Bordoff, current Director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Energy; and David Sandalow, Inaugural Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University, and former Under Secretary of Energy (Acting) and Assistant Secretary for Policy & International Affairs. These experts mentored individual cadets role-playing presidential advisors and provided an overview of the White House’s approach to climate change to all of the cadets and faculty engaged in the SIMEX. Read More