The Pentagon: A major threat to the climate

The U.S. Congress and Senate are arguing over whether to give the U.S. military $750 billion or $725 billion in its upcoming spending bill. With either of the figures the U.S. military will continue to grow unchecked, will continue to be the world’s largest military, and will continue to suck resources from other important American projects like diplomacy, environmental restoration, and caring for the unfortunate of the world. 

Because of its aggressiveness, because of its revered status in the American mind, and because of its obscene cost, the United States military is the greatest threat to national security that our nation faces.

In June Brown University’s Cost of War Project released a report pointing out that the U.S. threatens national and global security in another way. 

The U.S. Department of Defense poses a grave threat to the planets climate because of its huge fossil fuel usage.

The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest institutional consumer of fossil fuel in the world, writes Brown University.

Much of this gas-guzzling is attributed to the military’s aggressive and expansive endless war since 2001. Between 2001 and 2017 the United States emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases.

“This is equivalent to the annual emmissions of 257 million passenger cars, more than double the amount the U.S. currently has on the road,” Brown writes. “If the Department of Defense were a country, its 2017 emmissions alone would have made it the 55th largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, greater than the entire industrialized countries such as Portugal or Sweden.”

A third of the military’s fuel consumption went to war making activities such as the so called War on Terror. This, the report points out, is the equivalent of destroying nine million mature trees and their carbon sequestration capacity.

Brown points out that the military’s biggest gas guzzlers are its military jets.

In recent years the U.S. military has actually been reducing its fossil fuel usage by turning to efficiency, weatherization, and renewable energy. Nevertheless, it remains, by far, the governments largest consumer of fossil fuel.

Climate activists should care about the military’s huge war-making  carbon foot print. If the United States were to end its war making in the Middle East and turn towards more fuel efficient diplomacy we would all be safer.

You can read a summery of the report here  https://tinyurl.com/y4mn9ttl

And the entire report here: 

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/ClimateChangeandCostofWar