The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions

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. 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 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.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1
I The Deep Cycle
1 So Hungry, So Thirsty: Coal, Oil, and War 25
2 The Life Blood and the Deep Cycle: Oil and U.S. Military Doctrine Since World War II 65
II The U.S. Military and Climate Change
3 Climate Change Science and the Politics of Counting Military Emissions 103
4 A Guide to U.S. Military and Military-Industrial Emissions since 1975 127
III U.S. Military Doctrine and National Security Strategy
5 Energy and Climate Security: Finding and Fixing Vulnerabilities 181
6 Climate Change as "Threat Multiplier" 203
IV The Way Ahead
7 A Lean Green Fighting Machine? Mitigation Versus Adaption 231
8 The Path to Climate Security 253
Acknowledgments 291
Appendix: Estimating U.S. Military Greenhouse Gas Emissions 295
Abbreviations 313
Notes 315
Index 371

About the Author :
Neta C. Crawford is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and Codirector of the Costs of War Project.

Review :
"A brilliant guide for how we might effectively confront global warming and is filled with practical measures we can implement along the way."
– Science