Rising military spending jeopardizes climate targets
The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report highlights the reliance on sustainable socio-economic pathways to meet the 1.5 °C or 2 °C targets. However, these scenarios lack a quantitative assessment of the impact of global military spending on CO<sub>2</sub> emissions. Our study shows that events such as the 2001-2011 war on terrorism and the 2022 Russian-Ukrainian war led to an increase in CO<sub>2</sub> emission intensity of 0.04 (95% CI: 0.03-0.05) kg/USD for every 1% escalation in global military expenditure as a percentage of GDP (MILEX ratio). This increase accounts for 27% of the total change in CO<sub>2</sub> emission intensity between 1995 and 2023. In scenarios where the global MILEX ratio exceeds thresholds of 12% (for SSP1-1.9) or 24% (for SSP1-2.6), the 1.5 °C or 2 °C climate goals would become unattainable by the end of the century, highlighting the urgent need for a more peaceful international environment to effectively limit global warming.
Authors
- Jie Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3941-0053)
- Jieming Chou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3343-3673)
- Qi Ran (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9051-2928)
- Duofan Zheng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1407-8183)
- Wenjie Dong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9635-6292)
- Wenjun Liang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7249-3231)
- Wenping Yuan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1469-4395)
- Xinyue Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9206-0021)
- Chenhao Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7240-3305)
- Fei Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9223-0011)
- Rong Deng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6278-4125)
- Deliang Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0288-5618)
- Kaixi Wang
Institutions
- Peking University (CN)
- Beijing Normal University (CN)
- Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou) (CN)
- Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) (CN)
- Tsinghua University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2025-05-22
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59877-x
- Citations
- 8
- Primary Topic
- Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 25.05
Funders
- National University of Singapore
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Tsinghua University
- Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology
- Nanjing University