Election 2024: Tanks, Ships & Jets Have Big Carbon Emissions
Have Biden & Harris trimmed military emissions and leveraged its Red state facilities to move the needle on climate action?
As noted four years ago in the previous report card, the US military consumes 80% of all of the energy that the federal government uses annually. It’s likely the single biggest consumer of fossil fuels on the planet. One of Obama’s biggest climate wins was bringing 230,000 troops back from overseas deployments as he ended the severely misguided invasion of Iraq and significantly reduced USA’s presence in Afghanistan in preparation for full withdrawal. All else has paled by comparison.
Obama also brought the USA into the Paris Agreement, which had the notable feature of making military emissions recording and publication voluntary, unlike Kyoto, which explicitly excluded them. The voluntary nature of the reporting didn’t stop US Republicans from opposing the entire Paris Agreement on the grounds of military emissions. Trump took the USA out of the Agreement immediately upon taking office, so no debate on voluntary reporting to align with those provisions even entered agendas. Biden brought the USA back into the Agreement, and so the provisions regarding optional military emissions reporting came back into play.
