U.S. President Barack Obama has made efforts to stabilize the climate a centrepiece of his final year in office. America’s military has declared that climate change “poses immediate risks to U.S. national security.” Yet the country continues to spend $30 on war-making for every dollar it invests in efforts to mitigate or adapt to climate disruption, according to a report by the Washington, DC-based Institute for Policy Studies.
“Adding up all the major categories of climate-related federal spending, [including] research on global warming and clean energy, international climate aid, renewable energy tax credits, and adaptation efforts,” Grist reports, “the U.S. is dishing out under US$20 billion this year and just over $21 billion next year.”
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By contrast, the country’s military budget “is more than $586 billion this year, and $588 billion in 2017,” writes correspondent Ben Adler. The money the country directs to climate response, he adds, is also “$34 billion less than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says our public sector should be spending on climate change.”
China, he notes, spends an estimated $230 billion on defense, $30 billion on climate. “That’s a ratio of 8:1 instead of the U.S.’s 30:1,” Adler observes. “Aren’t we supposed to be trying to out-compete China?”
