Militarizing the Climate Crisis: An Analysis of the Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Militarization on Nations’ Carbon Emissions, 1990–2020

Abstract

Building on scholarship in global political economy, historical sociology, and environmental sociology, as well as emerging streams of research on militarization and climate change, we theorize about and successively investigate the short-run and long-run effects of two far-reaching characteristics of militarization on nations’ carbon emissions and the climate crisis in general. We contend that emergent and changing conditions associated with the capital-intensiveness and size of militaries shape path dependencies, which structure short-run and long-run effects on carbon pollution. To test our propositions, we estimate dynamic models of emissions for 104 nations from 1990 to 2020. Overall, the findings confirm our arguments. The short-run and long-run effects of the capital-intensiveness and size of militaries on carbon emissions are positive and nontrivial. Further, their estimated short-run and long-run effects are consistent across three distinct measures of carbon emissions, statistically symmetrical, robust to different modeling techniques, and not sensitive to any nations included in the analysis.