Rising NATO military spending to cause huge spike in emissions, report warns

This story was originally published by The Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration

A planned expansion of military spending by NATO countries could generate an additional 1,320m tonnes of planet-heating pollution over the next decade — on a par with the annual greenhouse gas emissions generated by Brazil, the fifth largest emitter in the world, according to a new report.

Military activity is fossil-fuel intensive, yet official country data on military emissions is patchy or non-existent.

Now a review of 11 recent academic studies by Scientists for Global Responsibility has found that each additional $100bn of military spending leads to an estimated 32m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) being dumped into the atmosphere.

The emissio