Military Emissions Are Too Big to Keep Ignoring – The Atlantic

Source: Military Emissions Are Too Big to Keep Ignoring – The Atlantic

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 but 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.

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” noted 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, which is more than the total emissions of the continent of Africa.