Sometimes deniers get really close to "getting it" — writing something that's so wrong it's gone all the way around and is just about right. But not quite.
That was the case with a recent opinion piece by Thomas Spoehr, a retired Army lieutenant general now working for the industry-funded Heritage Foundation, which owns the DailySignal blog, that published his complaint about the "Army's Misplaced Priorities: Recruitment Shortfall vs. Climate Change."
Spoehr is concerned about the 465,600-strong U.S. Army because it "was authorized" to have 485,000 active-duty soldiers this year. It's "a bona fide crisis," Spoehr writes, linking to a piece he wrote back in July that calls (but in now way justifies) the Army's inability to recruit 20,000 new soldiers a crisis.
The real crisis, of course, is climate change, but Spoehr is mad because "the same week that the Army fails to achieve its recruiting goal—a direct measure of its health—it released a major news announcement trumpeting the release of its climate change remediation plan."
The 50-page plan is "an incredible amount of organizational effort" that "seemingly should have been first applied to its current recruiting crisis." Because if any government agency is underfunded, it's definitely the Pentagon. Certainly not enough money there to do more than one thing at once!
"It’s about priorities. It’s also about optics." Spoehr continues, "At the time when the Army most needs the support of the nation to persuade young people to join its ranks, it is busy releasing climate strategies. What message does that send?"
Well gee whiz, maybe it sends the message that the Army wants the young people it's trying to recruit to know that, like them, it cares about the climate crisis! (At least when ordered to produce such a plan by the President, as is the case here.) Then there's also the fact that the climate crisis will almost-certainly increase the danger faced by those recruits.
That the climate crisis is a consideration for the would-be Army recruits doesn't seem to enter into Spoehr's calculations (to use the word figuratively, there's no actual evidence, of anything, in the piece). But he does mention that "perhaps we should take comfort in the knowledge that while the Army plummets in size and capacity, what is left will at least be producing less carbon dioxide."
… yeah, man! Pretty much! The Department of Defense is the world's largest institutional emitter, polluting more than almost 140 entire countries, so having a plan to address such a situation may be greenwashing, but at least it's something!
Spoehr gets so very, very close to understanding the reality of the issue: Kids who are aware of and engaged with the world around them care about the climate crisis, and the Army needs them to want to join the Army if it's going to address that so-called recruitment crisis.
But close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades — which is perhaps why close to getting it was the best retired Army lieutenant general Spoehr could do.
Though with the example Spoehr's setting, it's not a shock that more young people aren't signing up for the service to follow in his footsteps.