How the US became the biggest military emitter and stopped everyone finding out | Climate crisis

R.A prominent expert warned that the climate effect of Donald Trump’s geopolitical ambitions may deepen the disaster of the planets, which led to a global military accumulation that accelerates greenhouse gas emissions.

The Pentagon-the American Armed Forces and the Defense Ministry agencies (DOD)-is the largest ethics of the world’s greenhouse gases, which represents at least 1 % of the total American emissions annually, according to the Neta Crawford analysis, co-founder of the war cost project at the University of Brown.

Over the past five decades, US military emissions have risen and have diminished with their geopolitical fears and aspirations. In 2023, the Pentagon operations and its compositions were born about 48 megatone of carbon dioxide (MTCO₂E)-Gas more accurate than the planet than the entire countries, including Finland, Guatemala and Syria that year.

Now, again, the American military carbon imprint is significantly in the threshold of height with Trump’s height of the old geopolitical system in his second presidency. In the first 100 days of his second term, Trump threatened military action in Panama, Greenland, Mexico and Canada, dropping bombs on Yemen and increasing military sales to Israel, which intensified its military attack on Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen and Lebanon.

Trump also aligned the United States with former opponents, including Russia, while direct or veiled threats are thin on the former allies, including Ukraine and the entire NATO alliance. Relations with China It sank in the chaotic war of Trump.

“If Trump continues with his threats, the American military emissions will go up at all, and this will lead to a ripple effect.”

“We already see a lot of escalating discourse, with fewer slopes and less commitment to resolving conflicts. The former allies or allies in the United States have increased their military spending, so their emissions will rise.

Pentagon is the largest individual fossil fuel consumer in the United States, which already represents about 80 % of all government emissions. In March, the Minister of Defense, Higseth House, written on x: “Deptofdefense does not do the foolishness of climate change. We are training and wrestling war.”

Trump has promised 1tn in defensive spending for 2026 – which if congress is approved by Congress, he will represent a 13 % increase in the Pentagon 2025 budget in 2025 Unprecedented discounts For almost a federal agency, including those that Research and responding to the climate crisis. His military ambitions sit along with orders to end climate research in Pentagon and the broader assault on climate work through the government, while also taking steps to increase fossil fuel extraction.

“No one spends like the United States on the army and want to spend more. If they neglect education, health and infrastructure and weaken their economy, it will become madness with greatness around competitors, let’s say China, and this fear will lead to more spending.

“Of course, it depends on what they do and how they do it, and the Ministry of Defense may slow some of this, because, frankly, provocative, stupid and unnecessary, but we go completely to the wrong way. Emissions rise in a step with military spending, and this is the wrong time to do so.”

In 2024, military spending all over the world had increased since the end of the Cold War, reaching 2.7 Triton as wars and increasing tensions prompted spending, according to Modern report By the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

American military spending – emissions – both are the highest in the world, in a long way. Thanks to the United States, countries are not required to calculate military emissions to the United Nations. In the period before the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 international treaty that set binding targets for greenhouse gas discounts, the Pentagon pressed the White House Bill Clinton to pay for emissions exemption from military fuel use.

The United States worked on its friends and enemies, and Kyoto was celebrated as a victory for American aspirations. “We have taken special pain … to completely protect the unique position of the United States as the only superpower in the world with global military responsibilities,” Stewart Eisenstat, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Congress. “The Kyoto Protocol has not limited the United States.”

Crowford’s research began more than a decade after discovering that there was no data for its participation with its students in the field of university climate change – although the Pentagon has warned for decades of threatening climate change to American national security.

I found that military spending and emissions rises when the United States is in a direct war or prepares for war. During the accumulation of Ronald Reagan to combat communism in the 1980s, the spending increased and with its use of fuel and emissions. After the end of the Cold War, spending and emissions decreased throughout the 1990s, regardless of the rise during the first Gulf War. After the September 11 attacks, emissions rose again when the United States fired wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

From 1979 to 2023, the Pentagon established approximately 4000 mtco₂E – almost like the entire 2023 emissions that India, a country of 1.4 billion people. Its facilities and 700 bases are about 40 %, while 60 % of operating emissions, caused by the use of fuel in war, training and exercises with other countries, according to the Crawford analysis.

In addition, the US-based military industry manufactures weapons, aircraft and other equipment for war-generates more than twice the greenhouse gases emitted by the Pentagon every year.

However, the effect of the well -known American military climate may serve as a large number of appointments. Cruford numbers do not represent greenhouse gases caused by bombs, destroying buildings and subsequent reconstruction. An additional company₂ It is launched in the atmosphere as a result of the destruction of carbon basins, such as forests, agricultural lands, and even whales that were killed during marine exercises, and are not generated by burning oil fields or bombing pipelines during conflicts.

Miscellaneous, the impact of ripples increasing militarization and operations is not calculated by allies and enemies. For example, emissions from the armed forces and death teams in Argentina, El Salvador and Chile during the US -backed dirty wars, are not calculated, and their military competitions do not exceed in response to American threats. The jet fuel that is shipped to Israel and Ukraine can be calculated if it is transferred to the military carrier, while commercial shipments of crude used for war are not.

“This is important, however, so far, it has not been well understood the consequences of the climate of military spending and war,” said Kraovord. “We have long been reduced from the impact of mobilization, war and reconstruction.”

However, the Pentagon has long warned that water scarcity, sea level rise and desertification in weak areas can lead to political instability and forced migration, which frame climate change as a “threat” of American interests. In 1991, former President George Haran Bush officially admitted climate change as a threat to national security.

Recently, the direct threat posed by floods, forest fires and lands to the American military capabilities has become clear. In 2018, during the first Trump administrationThe flood water destroyed Hurricane Michael Air Force Base in Florida, and a few months later, another storm was greatly damaged in Nebraska, the country’s nuclear arsenal headquarters.

In general, the American army has reduced its use and emissions since 1975, thanks to the locks of the base, less and smaller exercises, coal -switching, cars and increasingly effective operations. But according to Croford, this is driven by improving the efficiency of the fighters – not the environment.

“The Pentagon has developed immigration from climate change as a threat to get more money, which indicates lack of sympathy and failure to think about the future. If they really believe their own speech, they will of course reduce their contribution to climate change by reducing emissions. It is difficult in the stomach.”

The effect of the military ripple is playing. In response to the Earth’s conquest of Russia-and recently, Trump’s transformation towards tyranny and anti-Ukraine is the anti-europhy-UK discourse-the United Kingdom, Germany and other NATO countries increased in military spending.

Here lies an essential problem, as Crowford argues. “We cannot allow Ukraine to fall, but this does not mean that you must fill all the armies in Europe in this way and spend this a lot. Russia is not the threat it was years ago, yet the current response is based on the same old military doctrine.

“There is a less expensive and less intense greenhouse method in standing in front of the Russians, and that will be to support Ukraine directly,” said Kraofford, an expert in military doctrine and peacebuilding, and a professor of international relations in the current montage of Burton at Oxford University.

Another global military trend that can have great climate and environmental costs is the expansion of nuclear forces. The United States and the United Kingdom are considering updating their submarine fleets, while the expanding nuclear force in China includes an increasing arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Nuclear weapons production and global warming.

“The nuclear update is supposed to make us safer and more stable, but it usually increases the traditional forces as well,” said Crowford. “It is part of the broader militarization, all of which lead to an escalating cycle of emissions. An enlarged threat always leads to enlarged emissions.”

The total military carbon fingerprint is estimated at about 5.5 % of global emissions – with the exception of greenhouse gases from conflict and fighting war. This is more than the joint contribution of civil aviation (2 %) and shipping (3 %). If armies in the world are a country, this number will represent the fourth largest national carbon imprint in the world – higher than Russia.

Global military accumulation may be catastrophic for global heating, at a time when scientists agree that time is running out to avoid catastrophic temperature.

Despite the increasing calls for further military accountability in the collapse of climate, Cruford is afraid that the Trump administration will not publish the fuel data on which it depends on the Pentagon emissions. In addition to the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the Trump administration failed to report the annual emissions of the United States to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change for the first time and erased everything he mentioned to climate change from government sites.

“Dealing with the scope, scope and influence of military emissions in the world is very important, so that there is accountability and a road towards the reduction … but the United States closes matters,” Crovord said. “It has become a black hole of information. It’s authoritarian.”