World’s militaries urged to account for their outsized carbon footprints

A group of environmental scientists and other researchers in the UK has issued a call for military carbon dioxide emissions to be included in global climate change mitigation efforts. Their commentary notes that the world’s militaries are significant contributors to greenhouse gases, with estimates suggesting they emit between 1% and 5% of global emissions. Although that figure is on par with the aviation and shipping industries, which stand at 2% each, militaries across the world are generally not required to report emissions.

‘This must change, or mitigation measures risk becoming mere guesswork,’ the researchers assert. They point out that if the US military was a country it would have the highest per-capita carbon emissions in the world – 42 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO_2eq) per member. The US as a whole emits 15 CO_2eq per person, the EU is at 6 CO_2eq, and the UK 5 CO_2eq. However, the UK military is at 18 CO_2eq, the data shows.