High T: Testosterone or Transparency?: Military Emissions and the Climate.

By Karen Elias

1.

As I write (July 2026), America’s national defense is in the news.

The Guardian reported this morning on the “escalating wave of attacks” in the Iran conflict, which “come days after the ceasefire between the two sides appeared to have entirely collapsed, with fears of a return to full-scale war” [US attacks oil tanker in strait of Hormuz as strikes reported in Tehran].

Today Heather Cox Richardson, in her on-line blog Letters From An American, reported: “House Republicans released a $95 billion budget framework to provide another $73 billion for additional military funding for the war on Iran . . . .” 

This morning a top NY Times headline read: “In Iran, Trump Risks Another American ‘Forever War’” [In Iran war, Trump Risks Another American ‘Forever War’ – The New York Times]. And according to another article in today’s Times, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced “a new mandatory screening program to test all service members age 30 and older, including women, for testosterone deficiency annually.” The goal? A “High-T Department of War.” “The aim, [Hegseth] said, is to better prepare service members for a modern battlefield that [he] described as ‘brutal and unrelenting’” [Hegseth Plans to Screen All Troops, Including Women, for Low Testosterone – The New York Times].

This is disturbing news on so many levels. Not only is the United States continuing to engage in a war with Iran that we never should have begun – a war that Public Citizen calls “illegal, unconstitutional, unpopular and devastating” [$200 Billion for Trump’s Iran War is Grotesque Beyond Words – Public Citizen] — but, under Republican leadership, the country is working to devote even more money to our already over-funded military so that – powered by enhanced testosterone levels — we can continue to engage in “unrelenting,” possibly forever warfare.

The lessons asking to be drawn from these facts could fill volumes. The one I want to focus on here is connected to another of this week’s headlines, again from the NY Times: “Smoke Floating Far From Canada’s Wildfires Will Darken Skies Again on Thursday” [Maps Show Where Wildfire Smoke Will Darken Skies on Thursday – The New York Times.]

My doors and windows were closed all day, with two air purifiers set on high. In a place that so far remains relatively unscathed by the climate crisis, this smoke reminded us that its effects transcend our human-made boundaries as the heat dome generated by our planet’s rising temperatures trapped the smoky air within our own home-ground.

We’ve done the useful work of making the necessary connections, studying the causes of our climate crisis and revealing its major contributors. We’ve changed our own habits to reduce our individual carbon footprints. But the military’s responsibility for perpetuating, and even exacerbating, the crisis has remained largely unexamined, allowing it to remain outside our zone of attention. This connection is what I’d like to examine here.

2.

Some historical background is needed to understand how the military’s considerable contribution to the climate crisis has gone largely unreported. In the negotiations leading up to the Kyoto Protocol during the Clinton administration, the Pentagon argued that reporting (and, by implication, limiting) greenhouse gas emissions from military operations would interfere with U.S. “military readiness” and that, therefore, the reporting of these emissions should be excluded on the grounds of national security [National Security and Climate Change: Behind the U.S. Pursuit of Military Exemptions to the Kyoto Protocol | National Security Archive]. The Pentagon’s arguments proved successful, and even though the Kyoto Protocol was never ratified by Congress due to concerns that emissions reduction efforts would harm the U.S. economy, our position left its mark. Military emissions were excluded from requirements for national reporting.

These allowances continued under the 2015 Paris Agreement. No mandates are included in the agreement that require its parties to either report, or reduce, their military emissions. When compiling their greenhouse gas inventories, countries may choose whether or not to include information about military emissions. Reporting is voluntary. This means that three of the largest military spenders and carbon emitters – the United States, Russia, and China – have been permitted to report nothing at all or to submit inadequate and incomplete data [Wars destroy lives and the climate. Why aren’t we counting military emissions?]. And whatever minimal pressure the agreement might have imposed on the United States has completely disappeared now that President Trump has withdrawn from the agreement a second time.

Estimates suggest that the Iran conflict alone has emitted over five million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (the standard that measures climate impact against a CO2 baseline), but none of this information appears in official reports [Wars destroy lives and the climate. Why aren’t we counting military emissions?] Meaningful accountability is sadly missing.

3.

Emissions from the military sector come from multiple sources: the fueling of military vehicles, including aircraft, ships, drones and tanks; electricity generation; the manufacture of military products, defensive structures  and weapons; waste management; energy-related direct combat; the combustion of bombs and munitions; and the reconstruction of decimated infrastructure. If, in addition to the typical atrocities associated with armed conflict, both pre- and post-conflict activities (including, for example, the building of defensive structures as well as reconstruction and the delivery of aid to displaced persons) are taken into consideration, military spending across the world measures close to three trillion dollars. These enormous investments produce equally enormous amounts of greenhouse gases. “Every defense dollar produces more than twice the emissions of a dollar spent anywhere else in the economy – and global military spending hit 2.7 trillion in 2024. On currrent trends, it reaches 6.6 trillion by 2035” [Your Carbon Footprint Is Counted. The Military’s Is Missing. | WIRED Middle East]. As an example of the spending that makes militaries across the globe “some of the largest carbon polluters on the planet,” in the years between 2001 and 2017 “the U.S. military emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, putting it on par with the annual emissions of medium-sized countries” [Israel-Gaza conflict carbon emissions exceeded 30 million tons – ScienceDirect]. And every war being waged across the globe adds to the emissions burden. The war in Gaza, for example, is thought to have produced 33.2 million tons of C02 equivalent; this is equal to the yearly emissions of 7.6 million gas-fired cars [ Israel-Gaza conflict carbon emissions exceeded 30 million tons – ScienceDirect]. And the wars go on.

4.

Global efforts to achieve climate neutrality are clearly being undermined by military activities that continue virtually unabated across the world. “Every degree of warming we are trying to avoid is undermined by wars” [Wars destroy lives and the climate. Why aren’t we counting military emissions?]. These efforts are also being stymied by the refusal of our militaries to disclose their emissions data. Driven by an urgency fueled by the increase in both the number and the force of our climate emergencies, international agencies are starting to exert pressure. A year ago, in July 2025, the International Court of Justice (the principal judicial arm of the United Nations) issued an opinion urging the world’s nations to act proactively to protect our climate from harm. Commentators believe this move could be effective in providing a legal framework within which military action could be held to a standard of accountability. In an effort to further strengthen this legal framework, the United Nations has issued what are being called the PERAC Principles, the UN Principles on Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflict. These principles, which apply to all phases of armed conflict, including occupation, are designed to introduce environmental protection as a necessary component of military law. If these principles are officially endorsed by the UN, they could act to protect the environment not just persuasively but as an obligatory, legally binding force [Israel-Gaza conflict carbon emissions exceeded 30 million tons – ScienceDirect].

Our climate goals are proving more and more elusive. If we hope to make real progress, the military cannot be allowed to exempt itself from accountability. In an ideal world, of course, we might be able to ask for an absence of war. In the meantime, however, the military must publish its emissions data, not reluctantly but as part of a freely acknowledged debt to the planet. This data must include a clear-eyed assessment of its emissions as well as a frank acknowledgement of the environmental harms its activities have produced. In addition to this reporting, the military must finally commit to mitigation strategies. If wars are to continue, we must have ways to repair, and eventually reduce, their damage.

5.

Today, a week after I began writing this blog, Reuters reports that the U.S. military has completed its 12^th straight night of strikes on Iran [US military completes 12th straight night of strikes on Iran].