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The Guardian
6 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
How the US became the biggest military emitter and stopped everyone finding out
The climate impact of Donald Trump's geopolitical ambitions could deepen planetary catastrophe, triggering a global military buildup that accelerates greenhouse gas emissions, a leading expert has warned. The Pentagon – the US armed forces and Department of Defense (DoD) agencies – is the world's largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter, accounting for at least 1% of total US emissions annually, according to analysis by Neta Crawford, co-founder of the Costs of War project at Brown University. Over the past five decades, US military emissions have waxed and waned with its geopolitical fears and ambitions. In 2023, the Pentagon's operations and installations generated about 48 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) – more planet-warming gases than emitted by entire countries including Finland, Guatemala and Syria that year. Now, once again, the US military carbon footprint is on the cusp of rising significantly as Trump upends the old geopolitical order in his second presidency. In the first 100 days of his second term, Trump threatened military action in Panama, Greenland, Mexico and Canada, dropped bombs on Yemen and increased military sales to Israel, which has intensified its military assault on Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen and Lebanon. Trump has also aligned the US with former adversaries including Russia, while hurling direct or thinly veiled threats at former allies including Ukraine and the entire Nato alliance. Relations with China have sunk amid Trump's chaotic trade war. 'If Trump follows through with his threats, US military emissions will absolutely rise, and this will cause a ripple effect,' said Crawford, author of the book The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of US Military Emissions. 'We're already seeing lots of escalatory rhetoric, with fewer off-ramps and less commitment to resolving conflicts. The allies or former allies of the US have increased their military spending, so their emissions will go up. As adversaries and potential adversaries of the United States increase their military activity, their emissions will go up. It's very bad news for the climate.' The Pentagon is the largest single fossil fuel consumer in the US, already accounting for about 80% of all government emissions. In March, the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, wrote on X: 'The @DeptofDefense does not do climate change crap. We do training and warfighting.' Trump has promised $1tn in defence spending for 2026 – which if approved by Congress would represent a 13% rise on the 2025 Pentagon budget amid unprecedented cuts to almost every other federal agency, including those that research and respond to the climate crisis. His military ambitions sit alongside orders to terminate climate research at the Pentagon and a broader assault on climate action across government, while also taking steps to boost fossil fuel extraction. 'No one spends like the US on the military and they want to spend even more. If they neglect education, health and infrastructure and their economy weakens, they will get paranoid about rivals, let's say China, and this fear will cause even more spending. It's an escalatory downward spiral, which often doesn't end well – especially for the country doing the escalating,' said Crawford. 'Of course, it depends on what they do and how they do it, and the DoD may slow-roll some of this, because it is, frankly, provocative, stupid and unnecessary, but we're going exactly the wrong way. Emissions go up in step with military spending, and this is exactly the wrong time to do this.' In 2024, worldwide military expenditure had its steepest rise since the end of the cold war, reaching $2.7tn as wars and rising tensions drove up spending, according to a recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. US military spending – and emissions – are both the highest in the world, by a long way. And it is thanks to the US that states are not required to account for military emissions to the UN. In the run-up to the Kyoto protocol, the 1997 international treaty that set binding targets for greenhouse gas reductions, the Pentagon lobbied the Bill Clinton White House to push for a blanket exemption for emissions generated by military fuel use. US pressure on its friends and foes worked, and Kyoto was celebrated as a win for American ambitions. 'We took special pains … to fully protect the unique position of the United States as the world's only superpower with global military responsibilities,' Stuart Eizenstat, undersecretary of the state department, told Congress. 'The Kyoto protocol did not limit the US.' Crawford's research began more than a decade ago after discovering there was no data to share with her undergraduate climate change students – despite the Pentagon having warned for decades about the threat of climate change to US national security. She found that military spending and emissions rise when the US is directly at war or preparing for war. During Ronald Reagan's anti-communism buildup in the 1980s, spending surged and with it fuel use and emissions. After the end of the cold war, spending and emissions fell throughout the 1990s, apart from a spike during the first Gulf war. After the 9/11 attacks, emissions again surged as the US launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. From 1979 to 2023, the Pentagon generated almost 4,000 MtCO2e – about the same as the entire 2023 emissions reported by India, a country of 1.4 billion people. Its installations and 700 bases account for about 40%, while 60% are operational emissions, resulting from fuel use in war, training and exercises with other countries, according to Crawford's analysis. In addition, the military industry – US-based companies manufacturing weapons, planes and other equipment for warfare – generates more than double the greenhouse gases emitted by the Pentagon each year. Still, the known US military climate impact is probably a significant undercount. Crawford's figures do not account for greenhouse gases generated by dropping bombs, destroying buildings and subsequent reconstruction. The additional CO2 released into the atmosphere as a result of destroying carbon sinks such as forests, farmland and even whales killed during naval exercises are also not included, nor are those generated by burning oil fields or blowing up pipelines during conflicts. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion Significantly, the ripple effect of increased militarisation and operations by allies and enemies is also not counted. For instance, the emissions generated by the armed forces and death squads of Argentina, El Salvador and Chile during the US-backed dirty wars are not accounted for, nor those from China increasing its military exercises in response to US threats. Jet fuel shipped to Israel and Ukraine can be counted if transported on a military tanker, while commercial shipments of crude used for warfare are not. 'These are important but, as yet, not well understood climate consequences of military spending and war,' Crawford said. 'We've long underestimated the impact of mobilisation, war and reconstruction.' Yet the Pentagon has long warned that water scarcity, sea level rise and desertification in vulnerable regions could lead to political instability and forced migration, framing climate change as a 'threat multiplier' to US interests. In 1991, former president George HW Bush formally acknowledged climate change as a national security threat. More recently, the direct threat posed by floods, wildfires and land degradation to US military capabilities has become clear. In 2018, during the first Trump administration, flood water from Hurricane Michael destroyed an air force base in Florida, and then a few months later another storm significantly damaged the Strategic Command base in Nebraska, headquarters of the nation's nuclear arsenal. Overall, the US military has reduced its fuel use and emissions since 1975, thanks to base closures, fewer and smaller exercises, switching from coal, and increasingly efficient vehicles and operations. But according to Crawford, this is driven by improving fighter efficiency – not the environment. 'The Pentagon has framed migration from climate change as a threat in order to get more money, which shows a lack of compassion and a failure to think ahead. If they really believed their own rhetoric, they would of course work to reduce their contribution to climate change by reducing emissions. The irony is difficult to stomach,' she said. The military ripple effect is playing out. In response to Russia's ground invasion of Ukraine – and more recently, Trump's shift towards authoritarianism and anti-Ukraine, anti-Europe rhetoric – the UK, Germany and other Nato countries have increased military spending. Here lies a fundamental problem, Crawford argues. 'We can't let Ukraine fall, but that doesn't mean you have to mobilise all of Europe's militaries in this way and spend this much. Russia is not the threat that they were years ago, yet the current response is based around the same old aggressive military doctrine. It's just nonsensical and bad news for the climate. 'There's a less expensive, less greenhouse gas-intensive way of standing up to the Russians, and that would be to support Ukraine, and directly,' said Crawford, an expert in military doctrine and peace building, and the current Montague Burton professor of international relations at the University of Oxford. Another global military trend that could have significant climate and environmental costs is the expansion of nuclear forces. The US and UK are considering modernising their submarine fleets, while China's expanding nuclear force includes a growing arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The production of nuclear weapons is energy- and greenhouse gas-intensive. 'Nuclear modernisation is supposed to be making us safer, more stable, but usually leads to adversaries also increasing conventional forces as well,' said Crawford. 'It's part of a broader militarisation, all of which leads to an upward spiral in emissions. The threat inflation always leads to emissions inflation.' The total military carbon footprint is estimated at about 5.5% of global emissions – excluding greenhouse gases from conflict and war fighting. This is more than the combined contribution of civilian aviation (2%) and shipping (3%). If the world's militaries were a country, this figure would represent the fourth largest national carbon footprint in the world – higher than Russia. The global military buildup could be catastrophic for global heating, at a time when scientists agree that time is running out to avoid catastrophic temperature rises. And despite growing calls for greater military accountability in climate breakdown, Crawford fears the Trump administration will no longer publish the fuel data that she relies on to calculate Pentagon emissions. In addition to withdrawing from the Paris agreement, the Trump administration has failed to report the US's annual emissions to the UN framework convention on climate change for the first time and has erased all mention of climate change from government websites. 'Getting a handle on the scale, scope and impact of the world's military emissions is extremely important, so that there is accountability and a path toward reduction … but the US is shutting things down,' said Crawford. 'It's becoming a black hole of information. It's authoritarianism.'
The Guardian
22-05-2025
- Climate
- The Guardian
Drowned herds. Towns underwater. Farmers in NSW are facing ‘absolute devastation'
For dairy farmer James McRae, the floods arrived in a perfect storm. It had been a wet autumn on the New South Wales mid-north coast, saturating the soil, which made it hard to sow new pastures. When 200mm of rain hit overnight on Monday, low-lying farms in his community of Barrington were 'completely decimated'. One of McRae's friends remained on his farm with his cattle for days until he had to be rescued by boat, leaving the cows behind to drown. Another, with a young family, has lost whole herds – including calves – their house and their machinery, three years after their farm was inundated in 2021. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email 'They've lost absolutely everything, just completely blank-slated,' he said. 'How do you even get through that? You've got young farmers being impacted by this, and they're probably thinking: 'where do we go from here? Can we rebuild? Can we get back on track?' 'A generation of farmers are potentially going to go out of the industry.' The vice-president of the NSW Farmers, Rebecca Reardon, said many farmers that have been hit by this week's devastating floods were still recovering from ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, when paddocks had become waterlogged, making it near impossible to get pastures ready to feed their stock through winter. 'This is a horrific flood,' she said. 'There's going to be infrastructure damage, further road damage which will affect getting fresh milk to market and machinery losses, pasture losses. 'It's too late in the season to be able to re-sow and grow pasture, because we're going into the cold period … there's a huge knock-on effect. 'You're running into the hundreds of millions [in losses], and it's going to be very difficult for some of these guys to get back on their feet.' Then there was the personal toll. Reardon said losing livestock was 'very distressing for any farmer', and this time the flood was so high many had been unable to get their animals to higher ground. 'A lot of these guys are coming off those 2021 floods, it will be heartbreaking for some. There's no doubt, it's events like these which make people rethink if they can continue to farm,' she said. As in so many natural disasters, community spirit kicked into gear. At St Joseph's primary school in the town of Taree, where a record deluge had inundated the Manning River, locals were taking care of five horses that were rescued by boat after becoming stranded. Businesses were quick to offer free food and hot showers to residents who had lost their homes, while local volunteers rushed out on dinghies conducting rescues. But despite their resilience, locals had questions as to why a natural disaster declaration wasn't made earlier, and how it had taken so long for rescues to occur. As of Thursday afternoon, three people had died, one remained missing and 48,000 people were isolated as the flood waters 'smashed through' communities on the mid-north coast and parts of the Hunter. The NSW premier, Chris Minns, warned people were experiencing 'levels of rise in local tributaries, creeks, rivers, that we haven't seen since 1920'. Taree resident Emma Browne said volunteer rescuers were 'tired and need help'. 'The community is now launching their own boats to help rescue people still waiting for two days,' she said. 'Where's the navy, army and everyone else?' About 20km south-east of Taree at Old Bar, Miranda Saunders was watching items wash ashore from Farquhar Inlet – one of the entrances from the Manning River. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Lounges, mattresses and chairs from churches had all spilled downstream alongside council barriers, shoes and cows, which washed up on beaches as far south as Forster. 'I know so many people that had to leave or are staying to try to save their homes,' she said. 'In 2019, we had the fires. In 2021, the record floods. And now this. 'In Taree … streets are waist deep. Wingham is completely under water. A national disaster should have been declared on Tuesday afternoon … our first responders do an incredible job, but they're overwhelmed.' Saunders, the station manager of 2TLP 103.3 Ngarralinyi, broadcast live to the Old Bar community for 15 hours on Tuesday from her kitchen, taking song requests from families and singles who had lost their power and were relying on radios to get information. 'From 7am to 9pm, I was on air … bringing comfort, connection, and critical updates to our community during one of the toughest days we've faced,' she said, describing the feeling across the community as one of 'absolute devastation'. Apart from extensive road closures, she hadn't been personally affected by the flooding, but her sister-in-law, along with her husband and four children, had to evacuate their home by boat late yesterday as flood waters entered their home. At the bend of the Manning River at Tinonee, Janeece Irving had just been elected to the local council on Wednesday when she evacuated her home, right next to where a ferry would cross to Taree in the 19th century. Her house was built in the 1930s, set 6 metres above the river on a hill. In two decades living there, this was the first flood where she'd had to evacuate. 'It's coming around over the top of my deck and under the house,' she said, speaking from her neighbour's property which was on safer higher land. 'We're just not prepared for this kind of flooding event … the volume of water is insane. It was just too scary for me to stay in the house – I was in fight or flight mode, I thought I was going to be washed away.' Her house was still standing strong on Thursday afternoon, but she knew what was to come – mopping up 'sticky, smelly mud', that was full of bacteria and clung to everything. 'I'm standing out here looking at the river, and there's this smell, like a dead animal smell coming off the river,' she said. 'I've lived in this valley for 60 years, came here when I was two. We're flood prone, but I've never seen anything like this.' Back in Barrington, McRae considered himself lucky. Their property was set among hills, so despite pasture damage and a power outage, the cattle had survived. He was just hoping grants provided in the 2021 floods would be available this time – which saved people from going out of business. In the meantime, his friends who had lost everything were in 'no state to talk'. He feared for the PTSD, and the years of recovery ahead. 'It's devastating,' he said. 'Completely devastating.'
Mail & Guardian
16-05-2025
- Science
- Mail & Guardian
How Africa should adapt to climate change
For Africa, this could be disastrous. Africa is getting the short end of the stick as climate change is tightening its grip on the continent, although it has only contributed about 3% (at most) of global carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution. Africa is the most vulnerable continent to the effects of climate change, with droughts, floods, extreme heatwaves and shrinking forests and vegetation causing widespread devastation. Irregular weather patterns mean that predicting storms and other weather-related phenomena is becoming increasingly difficult. The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that the planet's global average temperature exceeded the 1.6-degree Celsius warming threshold above pre-industrial levels in 2024, which is higher than the target set out in the Paris Agreement. For Africa, this could be disastrous. It is estimated that climate change could force 5% of Africa's population, or 113 million people – more than the populations of Egypt, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania and South Africa – to leave their homes by 2050. Furthermore, adapting to climate change is expected to cost between US $30 billion and $50 billion a year over the next decade, equating to 2%-3% of Africa's GDP. On Monday, 12 April, the World Meteorological Organisation published its State of the Climate in Africa 2024 report, stating: 'Extreme weather and climate change impacts are hitting every single aspect of socio-economic development in Africa and exacerbating hunger, insecurity and displacement.' Recent severe floods in South Sudan, which destroyed both livestock and livelihoods, are testament to this. The report also states that this has been Africa's warmest decade on record, that sea surface temperatures have reached record highs, and that droughts and floods will continue to wreak havoc on lives and livelihoods. It concludes that early warnings and climate adaptation must be scaled up. Dr Henno Havenga of the Climatology Research Group at the North-West University (NWU) in South Africa, agrees. 'My advice to policymakers on the continent is to invest in early warning systems and technologies, because climate change will continue to manifest itself in extreme weather events. While Africa is generally addressing the climate change dilemma with enough urgency at a policy level, this is not the case at a practical level. Early warning systems provide more than a tenfold return on investment. Just 24 hours' notice of an impending hazardous event can reduce the ensuing damage by 30%. According to the Global Commission on Adaptation, investing US $800 million in such systems in developing countries could prevent losses totalling between US $3 billion and $16 billion each year,' he explains. Although the forecast is bleak, Havenga warns against getting ahead of ourselves. 'We should be careful with our predictions, as they don't take into account human intuition and other technological developments. The only thing we can control is the here and now, so our focus should be on early warning systems such as weather stations, radar and short-term forecasts.' While Africa should increase its fiscal efforts to adapt to climate change, Havenga notes that human ingenuity provides a silver lining to this very dark cloud.
