The only winners from the military alliance’s spending policy are weapons manufacturers, concludes a briefing authored by the Transnational Institute and several nonprofits.
Royal Danish Navy frigate HDMS Triton patrols the seas around the Arctic, November 2022. (NATO/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
By Edward Carver
Common Dreams
The militaries of North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries emitted an estimated 233 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2023, a sharp uptick that exacerbates climate breakdown and serves only to enrich weapons manufacturers, according to a briefing issued Monday by the Transnational Institute, a research and advocacy organization, and several other nonprofits.
The 32 national militaries together emitted more carbon than the country of Colombia, which has a population of about 52 million people, the briefing says. NATO countries’ military spending increased from about $1.21 trillion in 2022 to $1.34 trillion in 2023, thanks in part to the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine. TNI used a spend-emission conversion factor to estimate the carbon cost of the spending.
The briefing’s authors warn that NATO’s spending targets must be abandoned or its emissions will continue to rise significantly in the next few years — despite a pledge to reduce emissions by 45 percent by 2030. Member countries have pledged to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense, and many have have already met or surpassed the target.
The authors note that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change determined that all sectors of the economy need to reduce emissions by 43 percent by 2030 from 2019 levels to keep global warming at or below the Paris agreement’s 1.5°C target.
“By 2030, we have to make a radical cut in emissions,” Nick Buxton, TNI’s communications manager, told The Guardian. “But the biggest investment we’re making worldwide, and in particularly NATO, is in military spending, which isn’t just not addressing the problem, but actually worsening the problem.”
The #NATOSummit is starting in Washington today. Our research shows that if all NATO members meet the 2% military spending target, by 2028 this would lead to a total estimated collective military carbon footprint of 2 bn tCO2e.
The climate is caught in the crossfire of war.?? pic.twitter.com/JBxO1fB408
— Transnational Institute (@TNInstitute) July 9, 2024
The United States accounts for more than two-thirds of NATO countries’ military spending and one-third of the world’s, which also surged in 2023. U.S. military spending increased by 24 percent from 2022 to 2023, and some leading Republicans in Congress have recently called for large increases.
A 2022 report from the Conflict and Environment Observatory, a research and advocacy group, estimated that military emissions accounted for 5.5 percent of all global carbon emissions. Estimates are difficult because lack of transparent reporting practices by many militaries, experts say.
The new briefing suggests that military spending could be diverted to climate finance for developing countries, which have been the subject of intense international negotiations in recent years, with rich countries slow to provide funding even as they spend profligately on their militaries, critics have argued.
“The climate is caught in the crossfire of war,” TNI said on social media. “We need peaceful solutions to conflicts if we are to defend our world. There is no secure nation on an unsafe planet.”
The “only winners” from NATO’s spending policy are weapons manufacturers, says the briefing, which states that backlogs of weapons orders at the 10 largest arms companies based in NATO member countries went up by an average of 13 percent in 2023.
(Transnational Institute)
Current orders will lock in emissions for decades, as military systems are normally used for 30 or 40 years, the briefing warns.
For example, Lockheed Martin, a major defense manufacturer, has said that NATO countries will by 2030 fly 600 of its F-35 jets, which use 5,600 liters of oil an hour, even more than the F-16 jets they’re replacing, the briefing says.
“The legacy of this increased arms trade will be an ever more militarized world at a time of climate breakdown,” the authors wrote. “This military expenditure will fuel wars and conflict that will compound the impact on those made vulnerable by climate change.”
Edward Carver is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
The neolib econopathy must have continuous growth, no matter how cancerous or parasitic. It defines away destruction of human and natural resources as unimportant, mere externalities. As a very profitable and expanding industry, the MIC is thus easy to justify. Plus serving as accoutrements for politicopaths whose lust for domination is also unbounded.
No way will any of this blinkered insanity ever look at the reality of climate change. The elites think their wealth and connections mean they will survive whatever happens. Or their allies in Silicon Valley and Euro equivalents will invent some technological quick fix. Or if all else fails, the military and their own private armies will protect them.
The harsh eco sci-fi of Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 book //The Ministry for the Future// looks less and less like fiction and more and more like an accurate forecast.
Odds are they are not just having the problem of lack of transparency regarding statistics in their own countries, but the Nato country statistics are not putting their pollution stats from their out of country bases on their stats. Instead it goes onto the stats of the harboring country. I imagine that would take it from 36th worst polluter out of 196, closer to #1.
And if one takes into account the PFCs from all the fire drills that get into the water, and the militaries ongoing secretive Geoengineering Climate Engineering projects (aka Aeronautic Aerosol Injection, or “chem trails”) to get rid of the waste products of industrial manufacturing coal plants, via nano sized highly flammable particulate matter, well……. . War and it’s weapons merchants and industries kill in more ways than appear obvious. It’s barbaric and entirely uncivilized.
I would wager that more bombs than the estimated recent 138,000 loss of life figures in Palestine, have been dropped. They don’t show us the stats of how many bombs were dropped. What kind of sick psychos get rich from the loss of human life? They need to be called out loudly and repetitively.
It’s too late, the cancer has spread and there is no stopping it…
It is NATO in its reckless and wholly unnecessary expansion to the Russian border that will cause a Third World War that will end life on Earth as we know it. Russia discontinued the Warsaw Pact, but the West, led by the U.S. has insisted on not only keeping NATO but driving it to the Russian border. There is nothing more stupid and dangerous that I can think of for the West to do as regards NATO and Russia. What possible good purpose can this serve? Absolutely none. If there is a problem between Russia and the West, it should be negotiated, as it was with the Cold War administrations: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Many respected American elder statesmen like George Kennan and Henry Kissinger warned against NATO expansion. I am appalled that the U.S. and its allies would do such a thing. Shame! You are endangering the whole world’s continued existence.
I agree, but the War Racket generates 100s of billions every year for the MICIMATT and it’s a perfect tool of kleptocracy: transfer trillions from the public coffers into the hands of the oligarchy. Since Congress is openly, and now legally, bribed , there is no way to alter the status quo.
I would rather refer to the work of the late prof. Stephen Cohen on this issue.
Henry Kissinger a “respected elder statesman”? Many called him a sociopath and an advocate and accessory to war crimes, but I guess being a mass-murdering imperialist, makes one a “respected statesman” in our NewSpeak parlance. Tony Blair and Bush Jr. are also considered elder sates men. As Kissinger’s hero, Klemenz von Metternich, reportedly quipped: “foreign policy is not for the plebs”. We plebs must know our place: worship the powerful, and never question their motives.
Besides, the sociopaths in charge may well believe that Nuclear Winter will ameliorate Climate Change and they can survive in their bunkers while reducing the “surplus population” of the planet and reduce the “carbon footprint” of humans. So, it might all work out.