[The world is finally talking about them. ]
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MILITARY EMISSIONS ARE TOO BIG TO KEEP IGNORING  
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Zoë Schlanger
January 17, 2024
The Atlantic
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_ The world is finally talking about them. _

, Thomas Dworzak / Magnum

 

For as long as the world’s diplomats have gathered to talk about
slowing the march of climate change, the one institution pointedly
missing from the agenda has been the military. This has been by
design: At the behest of the U.S., reporting military emissions was
largely exempted from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the document that set
binding emissions targets for nations that signed. The 2015 Paris
Agreement overturned the old exemption
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still did not require reporting of military emissions. Data remain
stupendously spotty. Only late last year, in the lead-up to the COP28
United Nations climate meeting in Dubai, was the connection between
the military and climate change brought up in brief mentions in a key
report.

Perhaps this was because, in some cases, militaries themselves have
begun announcing programs to “green” their operations. Or because
the nations at COP28 gathered against the backdrop of two active wars.
Or because the climate situation has become dire enough that the world
can no longer afford to ignore any major source of emissions.
Maintaining a military is on its own a highly energy-intensive
endeavor, and war, in addition to its immediate human toll, can
rapidly produce even larger spikes in greenhouse gases
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Whatever the reason, military emissions are now up for the tiniest
amount of discussion. A line in the UN’s 2023 “Global Emissions
Gap Report”
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that emissions from the military are “likely nontrivial” but
remain “insufficiently accounted [for]” under current reporting
standards. This was the first time the issue has ever appeared in a UN
emissions gap report, Linsey Cottrell of the Conflict and Environment
Observatory told me at COP28. Her organization has attempted to
estimate the global carbon footprint of the military using available
information and put the figure at 5.5 percent
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which is more than the total emissions of the continent of Africa.

Another first, per Cottrell: The European Union put out a call to
include military emissions in national net-zero targets in its COP28
resolution
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“We were always a bit hesitant in our legislation to include
military,” Peter Liese, the chair of the EU’s delegation, said
when one of Cottrell’s colleagues asked about the language during a
press conference in Dubai. He called it a “tricky” issue. “It is
of course sensible,” he added. But now “the military itself” is
addressing it openly: “They understand that they also need to look
at the climate effect of what they are doing.”

The U.S. military, meanwhile, is the single largest institutional
consumer
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petroleum in the world, according to the Costs of War
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at Brown University. It uses all that oil to fly its jets, power its
ships, and fuel its roughly 750 bases across 80 countries and
territories
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Because of incomplete data, comparing the emissions of the world’s
militaries is difficult. The United Kingdom’s House of
Commons estimated
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the U.K.’s military, which also has an extensive global presence,
was responsible for  3.3 million metric tons for fiscal year
2021–22, though that number did not include its defense industry,
which would likely bump it up far higher
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China, which is currently the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse
gases, has among the largest number
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active-duty military personnel and a comparatively small global
military presence but does not report its military emissions, Cottrell
said.

The U.S. Department of Defense puts its own emissions at 51 million
metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in fiscal year 2021, which
was roughly the same as the emissions produced by Sweden. (In response
to an inquiry about the military’s emissions disclosures, a
spokesperson pointed me to this report, which was congressionally
mandated
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About half of the total came from jet-fuel use. That’s more than
three-quarters of the U.S. government’s total emissions, and 1
percent of the total emissions of the country in 2020. And that’s to
say nothing of defense contractors
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who are not presently required to disclose their emissions.
Crawford estimates
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if the industrial complex that supports the military—weapons
manufacturing, for example—were included, the total would make up
about 2 percent of U.S. emissions.

When, in the 1990s, the U.S. pushed against any requirement to
disclose emissions in the Kyoto Protocol, U.S. military
officials warned [[link removed]] that
reporting their emissions could harm military readiness. The
implication, Neta Crawford, a professor at the University of Oxford
and a co-director of the Costs of War project
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that they had a very large greenhouse-gas-emissions footprint” and
didn’t want to have to shrink it. The exemption was important enough
to the U.S. that when Stuart Eizenstat, then the country’s chief
climate negotiator, assured a congressional committee—which included
now-President Joe Biden and his climate envoy John Kerry—that he’d
secured it, Kerry congratulated
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At the time, reaching the world’s more modest emissions-cutting
goals without touching the world’s militaries seemed possible—the
EU’s emissions target was to cut just 8 percent
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greenhouse gases; the U.S.’s was 7 percent. But now, COP negotiators
are discussing how to reach net zero, which would be impossible
without addressing military emissions.

Even after the 2015 Paris Agreement replaced the Kyoto-era exemption
with an option to disclose, UN reporting guidelines advise that
military emissions should be reported under a “non-specified”
category
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which could include many other sources. Confusing things further, the
emissions of a peacetime military are one thing; war increases them
substantially. Accounting for the climate impact of a war is its
own messy business
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and experts can produce only a best guess based on partial
information. A recent analysis
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peer-reviewed, tried to account for the emissions from the first 60
days of Israel’s campaign against Hamas—one of the largest
contributors, the researchers estimated, were U.S. cargo planes flying
in military supplies—and put the total higher than the annual
emissions of many individual small countries and territories,
including the Central African Republic and Belize
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The latest estimate
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the carbon consequences of Russia’s war on Ukraine puts the
conflict’s emissions on par with the total yearly emissions of
Belgium.

Lately, major militaries have been looking for at least some
solutions. “There is no way to reach net zero without also including
emissions from the military,” NATO Secretary General Jens
Stoltenberg said
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COP26, in 2021. DoD employees were on hand this year at COP to
champion the department’s green initiatives, which include an Army
plan to build microgrids
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all of its installations and moves toward electric combat vehicles.
These changes are largely motivated by the security risk posed by
climate change and fossil-fuel supplies themselves. “In Iraq and
Afghanistan, the most vulnerable soldiers were the ones who were
transporting that fuel. And we don’t want to put our soldiers in
that kind of harm’s way any more,” Rachel Jacobson, the assistant
secretary of the Army for installations, energy, and environment, said
on a COP28 panel.

Plus, climate change provides opportunities for the military to exert
its soft power in far-flung places. Because global warming will
destabilize “geopolitically vulnerable regions,” allowing
“nefarious actors to move in,” Jacobson said, the U.S. has an
interest in assisting these climate-addled places “where we may not
otherwise have those kinds of engagements.” She said the Army Corps
of Engineers is fixing water-management issues and responding to
climate disasters in places such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Botswana,
Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. “In Ecuador, we’re providing technical
assistance—get this—focused on the catastrophic erosion and
sedimentation caused by a Chinese-built dam,” Jacobson said.

The U.S. military’s emissions have been dropping dramatically since
the 1970s, though not necessarily driven by microgrids or electric
tanks. These reductions in part come from closing bases overseas, as
part of the general drawing back since the conclusion of the Cold War,
according to Crawford’s research. The DoD itself credits
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in emissions since 2010 to reductions in combat missions in Iraq and
Afghanistan, increased energy efficiency and use of renewables, and,
more recently, COVID-related cuts to military exercises.

For those who see a smaller military as a humanitarian good, the
solution is obvious: The only way to significantly rein emissions in
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be to shrink global American military presence even more. One day in
the middle of the two-week negotiations in Dubai, two people walked
into the media center holding signs that said STOP WAR and GO GREEN,
with 10% Military Budget for Climate Fund! in small text along the
bottom. Those people were Sun-Jin Yun, a dean of environmental studies
at Seoul National University, and Yul Choi, a notable Korean
environmentalist who in 1995 won a Goldman Prize
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for the environmental set, for his work fighting pollution and nuclear
weapons. “War itself emits lots of greenhouse gases,” Yun told me.
“Also, we waste money to have wars. But that money can go to climate
funds to save the lives of developing countries.”

At COP28, countries most battered by climate change were fighting for
mere slivers of the world’s military spending, which clocked in
globally at about $2.2 trillion
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2022, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute. A new “loss and damage” fund
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address climate damage in vulnerable countries set a goal of $100
billion but failed to raise even $1 billion. The U.S., the largest
historical emitter in the world, announced that it would aim to give
$17.5 million; its upcoming annual military budget totals $886
billion.

The idea of diverting military budget into climate funds might be
appealing if you believe that an expansive military apparatus does
more harm than good. But if you believe that global stability hinges
on an expansive military, the question of how to reduce its
contribution to the destabilizing force of climate change is thornier.
Climate change will cause future harm, instability, and conflict; war
and military operations also exacerbate climate crises through food
shortages, contamination, and displacement. Addressing military
emissions ultimately is a conversation about how to view security on
Earth. But it is a conversation that must take place. And as with all
things related to climate change, progress can’t come soon enough.

_Zoë Schlanger
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at The Atlantic._

* Climate Change
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* military industrial complex
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* military pollution
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