Under the new Paris agreement, armed forces worldwide will no longer automatically be exempt from emissions regulations. This includes the U.S. military, which is thought to be world's leading institutional consumer of crude oil, but its exemption from emissions reporting has made it difficult to know for certain.
Although the U.S. was never a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol, it requested to opt-out from disclosing the greenhouse gas emissions of its military by citing national security concerns. The Iraq war was responsible for 141 million tons of carbon releases in its first four years, the Guardian reports. Annually, then, this was more than the emissions from 139 countries during this period.
As Oil Change International's director, Stephen Kretzmann, told the Guardian: "If we're going to win on climate, we have to make sure we are counting carbon completely, not exempting different things like military emissions because it is politically inconvenient to count them."
He added, "The atmosphere certainly counts the carbon from the military, therefore we must as well."
The reality is that the new agreement allows countries to choose which national sectors are required to make emissions cuts before 2030, according to the Guardian, which does not force countries to ultimately cut military emissions. The removal of the automatic exemptions will allow for a clearer picture of carbon outputs, which could in turn pave the way for more decisive action in the future.
