According to the latest U.N. climate report, the world is on track to reach catastrophic levels of warming — more than double the 1.5 degrees Celsius target set by the Paris Agreement. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres called it “a file of shame.”
But the report also focuses on what can still be done to minimize climate impacts: the rapid phaseout of fossil fuels, big new investments in decarbonization, and a commitment from wealthier countries to help reduce climate impacts in the regions that are most affected.
Those are familiar calls. What is new is a recommendation for where to get funding for these responses: military budgets. “Moderate reductions in military spending,” the authors advise, “could free up considerable resources” to meet sustainable development goals and fight climate change.
They’re right. According to the latest data on global military expenditures, the world spent almost $2 trillion on militaries in 2020. The United States alone accounts for nearly 40% of that spending — more than the next 11 countries combined.
The bipartisan budget deal that Congress passed in March only sends that spending upward, directing $782 billion to the Pentagon — which is already a bigger polluter than many industrialized countries.
The same budget allocates just $1 billion for international climate finance. That’s a nominal increase from Trump-era spending, but only a small fraction of the $11 billion that President Joe Biden pledged to spend by 2024. And none of it is earmarked for the global Green Climate Fund, to which the United States still hasn’t met its Obama-era pledge of $3 billion.
To put this another way: This year, the United States will spend twice as much every day on the military than it does on international climate aid all year.
Last year, civil society groups called on the United States to deliver a total of $800 billion in international climate aid by 2030 as a “good faith down payment toward our fair share.” That may sound like a big number, but Congress now authorizes about that much for the military every year.
Experts at the Institute for Policy Studies have identified up to $350 billion per year that could be cut from the Pentagon without compromising our national security. Putting even a portion of that toward protecting our planet would make us far safer than buying more missiles, jets and bombs.
Transitioning off fossil fuels would also give far less leverage to petrostates like Russia. As the Ukraine-based Center for Environmental Initiatives Ecoaction recently noted, Russia’s war against their nation “has been bankrolled by the coal, oil and gas industries.” It called on leaders “to end the world’s addiction to fossil fuels.”
To claim any credibility as a global climate leader, the United States must put its money where its mouth is. Redirecting federal resources away from war and weapons could free up hundreds of billions of dollars to fund the rapid transition off fossil fuels we urgently need.
And that would leave us all much safer.
Lorah Steichen is the outreach coordinator for the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, which is run by The Progressive magazine and distributed by Tribune News Service.