The Department of Defense spews so much greenhouse gas every year that it would rank as the 55th worst polluter in the world if it were a country, beating out Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal, according to a new paper from Brown University’s Costs of War project.
The irony is that the military is concerned about what will happen as the world keeps heating up. Last year, the Department of Defense reported that half of its bases were threatened by the effects of global warming. Rising seas are regularly flooding Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia, even on sunny days, and melting permafrost threatens the stability of military buildings in the Arctic.