The study, led by Ryan Thombs of Penn State University and published in PLOS Climate on July 2, drew on publicly available data from the DOD spanning 1975 to 2022, linking reductions in military spending to significant decreases in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Researchers found that a decrease in expenditures has a larger effect on slashing energy consumption than a rise in expenditures does on heightening energy usage. Additional analyses show that this is due to cuts in DOD energy consumption from facilities, vehicles and equipment, and jet fuel in particular.
“We started this study not entirely sure what we were going to find,” Thombs told Newsweek on Thursday. "There are published studies on the impacts of increasing militarization on environmental outcomes, but studying the effects of cutting military spending was an open question.
“I think the finding that cutting expenditures had a larger impact than increasing expenditures was a little bit surprising but made sense, and it is also the thing that really stood out in our analyses.”
It’s not surprising…
'murica
USA military is exempt from any EPA policy or pollution mandates. If you live close to any type of military base, you and your family are more likely to be affected by pollution related illnesses, and you won’t be able to stop the military.
No they aren’t. Exemptions can be granted for small cutouts, but they are still held to federal regulations. A cup of fuel on the ground or any more than a drop of oil in the water triggers a mandatory reporting that the CO can be held personally liable for. Shit, they were breaking down office chairs with multiple dissimilar material components to recycle each material correctly. I’m sure there are multiple places that are getting away with not following requirements, but they are required to still follow federal laws regarding pollution and waste disposal.
The U.S. military has been identified as the largest single institutional emitter of greenhouse gases worldwide, according to a new study.
What a terrible mismatched headline.
How so? You mean it shouldve been mentioned right in the headline?
USA! USA! USA!
The headline is not what the article says. The article isn’t measuring nations, it is measuring individual organizations. The US military is one of the largest, most logistically active organizations on the globe, so the conclusion makes sense. But per capita or per activity? That’s going to be some energy intense manufacturer. Probably Chinese.
The US has by far the most military activity per capita, so it would probably still be the US.
That’s a billion people. Too many to be statistically highest per capital. It’s probably somewhere in Eastern or Central Europe which is taken advantage of by the West and has a lot of oil/minerals. Maybe Romania or Slovakia.
probably somewhere in Eastern or Central Europe
The worst per capita emissions tend to be in the Middle East. Qatar is regularly at the top of the charts
Per capita specifically controls for population size so it’s not possible to have too many people per capita.
Large populations tend to have a lot of shared utility and a lower per capita emissions standard as a result. Countries with lots of mass transit and dense housing enjoy significant efficiences of scale. One reason why India looks so good on paper, despite having some abhorrent ecological policies in practice.
Smaller countries - especially small tourist countries - tend to have emissions far higher than their native population size would suggest. Places like Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait regionally top the emissions per capita chart as a result. Canada and Russia also score badly in no small part because of how spread out the population ends up in countries with enormous amounts of wilderness.
Quelle surprise.
Drill, baby, drill!
