The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions
by Neta C. Crawford
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How the Pentagon became the world's largest single greenhouse gas emitter and why it's not too late to break the link between national security and fossil fuel consumption. The military has for years (unlike many politicians) acknowledged that climate change is real, creating conditions so extreme that some military officials fear future climate wars. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Defense-military forces and DOD agencies-is the largest single energy consumer in the United States show more and the world's largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter. In this eye-opening book, Neta Crawford traces the U.S. military's growing consumption of energy and calls for a reconceptualization of foreign policy and military doctrine. Only such a rethinking, she argues, will break the link between national security and fossil fuels. The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War shows how the U.S. economy and military together have created a deep and long-term cycle of economic growth, fossil fuel use, and dependency. This cycle has shaped U.S. military doctrine and, over the past fifty years, has driven the mission to protect access to Persian Gulf oil. Crawford shows that even as the U.S. military acknowledged and adapted to human-caused climate change, it resisted reporting its own greenhouse gas emissions. Examining the idea of climate change as a "threat multiplier" in national security, she argues that the United States faces more risk from climate change than from lost access to Persian Gulf oil-or from most military conflicts. The most effective way to cut military emissions, Crawford suggests provocatively, is to rethink U.S. grand strategy, which would enable the United States to reduce the size and operations of the military. show lessTags
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ThingScore 75
... Using only publicly available sources, she finds that in 2019 the US military and its manufacturers were responsible for emissions equivalent to 105.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. The official number cited is about half that. ... The great irony is that the DoD has been among the loudest voices in federal government on climate change, recognising threats such as bases flooding or the show more melting of Arctic ice making submarines easier to detect. Because the DoD assumes the worst effects of climate change are inevitable, Crawford writes, it has backed adaptation over solving the problem. Fossil fuels are so integral to the US it is hard to see how this history could have been much different. But Crawford convinces us that US military emissions should be accounted for like any others and that it should work harder to cut them, not just for the planet, but to shed a dependency dating back to the US civil war, which still shapes domestic energy policy today. show less
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Author Information
5+ Works 44 Members
Neta C. Crawford is Professor of Political Science at Boston University, and author of Argument and Change in World Politics (Cambridge, 2002; winner of the 2003 Robert Jervis and Paul Schroeder Best Book Award, (International History and Politics section of the American Political Science Association).
Awards and Honors
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- US Department of Defense
- Important events
- climate crisis
Classifications
- Genres
- Politics and Government, Nonfiction, Science & Nature, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 363.73 — Society, government, & culture Social problems and social services Public Safety - Police, Crime Investigation Environmental Issues - Pollution, Recycling, Global Warming Pollution
- LCC
- TD195 .A75 .C73 — Technology Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering Environmental effects of industries and plants
- BISAC
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- 11
- Popularity
- 1,999,057
- Rating
- (5.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 1
