The Climate Cost of Conflict
Why military and war emissions are largely missing from the world's climate accounting — and how much bigger the true picture likely is
In 2022, researchers from Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR) and the Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS) published the first detailed attempt to estimate the world's total military carbon footprint. Their finding: approximately 2,750 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent — around 5.5% of all global emissions .
If the world's militaries were counted as a single country, that would make them the fourth largest emitter on Earth — bigger than Russia.
At the 1997 Kyoto climate conference, pressure from the United States resulted in military emissions reporting being excluded from countries' official totals. The 2015 Paris Agreement removed the outright exemption, but replaced it with something similarly weak: reporting military emissions became entirely voluntary, again on national security grounds — for every country, not just the US.
The practical result: no government today is legally required to report its military emissions. Several of the world's largest military spenders — including India, Saudi Arabia and South Korea — currently provide no military emissions data to the United Nations at all.
The SGR/CEOBS researchers were explicit that their own 2,750 million tonne figure is conservative, because it only covers day-to-day military operations — bases, vehicles, aircraft, and supply chains. It does not include the emissions caused by actual warfare: the destruction of infrastructure, and the reconstruction that follows.
A peer-reviewed 2024 study of the Gaza conflict found that combat itself — jets, rockets, artillery — produced around 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Reconstruction of the destroyed homes, roads, schools and hospitals is estimated to eventually produce over 31 million tonnes — more than 20 times the emissions of the fighting itself.