Kinda wish they were bragging. Might trigger the US’ competitive streak and we’d be down two major polluters rather than one.
this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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I'd love to see a competitive effort at who can decarbonize faster.
A large part of the pollution coming from the US is due to the military. Given the approach the US used in the last cold war, I feel like this country would immediately turn to fossil-fascism
You got a source for that? Quick googling subjects the military emits about as much as Denmark, which would make it 0.6% of overall US emissions. I wouldn't call that a large portion.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18012022/military-carbon-emissions/ https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
From your own source, the military has been extensively underreporting their emissions for as long as they've been keeping track. There's also the fact that they don't even try to research into the wider military industrial complex, simply because that would be a nearly impossible task. You're going off the title of "more than Denmark", right? This source did the math in reverse. If it were a country, it would be 47th in the world. To say that it isn't a massive polluter in it's own right is either completely disingenuous or outright lying.
I'm not saying military ghg emissions aren't huge, but it's not a large part of overall US emissions. With the 59 million tones from your source, that means it accounts for about 1.2% of emissions. That's not small, but it more speaks to just how huge the US's overall emissions are.
Oh, I see now. I was simply stating "it's a huge polluter", and that got interpreted as a large percentage of emissions. It's a fair interpretation based on my wording though. The real winners are the people that now have multiple sources for the environmental harm caused by the military
There's no way they would do that since climate change is a "tradegy of the commons" problem.
The tragedy of the commons is a metaphoric label for a concept that is widely discussed in economics, ecology and other sciences. According to the concept, should a number of people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource such as a pasture, they will tend to over-use it, and may end up destroying its value altogether. To exercise voluntary restraint is not a rational choice for individuals – if they did, the other users would merely supplant them – yet the predictable result is a tragedy for all.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Currently, every country seeks to maximize the emissions that they are still allowed to have without being penalized (internationally, and by their own population).
The US landed men on the moon to show the Soviets who has the better technology. All countries have already agreed that climate change is not only a problem, but that emissions have to be lowered in the Paris Agreement. Soft power is real power, so a race towards zero emissions is entirly possible. Also there are other reasons for doing it too. Right now the US has a political disliking of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela and many other large oil producers. All of them would be weakend by the US lowering its own oil consumption too.
Unfortunately, the US decided to go the other direction and become a major oil producer in the last twenty years for the very reason you mention.
The tragedy of the commons is an oversimplified myth, debunked before it became popular. The miracle of the commons.