One sector of the global economy is conspicuously absent from countries’ efforts to halt climate change: the world’s militaries.
Nations participating in the Paris climate agreement are not required by the United Nations to report the carbon emissions from their armies and aircraft or warships and weapons. It’s up to individual governments to decide whether their armed forces must decarbonize.
But with war a seemingly perpetual feature of the modern age, some experts say it’s long overdue that military emissions be counted toward each country’s climate targets.
“A lot of what we advocate for is directly to change the reporting framework that the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] sets out,” said Ellie Kinney, a campaign coordinator with the United Kingdom-based nonprofit the Conflict and Environment Observatory.
