Follow us on social

Shutterstock_1689224182-e1690397797338

Congress looks to gut emissions reporting requirements for military contractors

Lawmakers want to make it harder to determine the ecological impact of weapons manufacturers, and activists aren’t happy.

Global Crises

The defense policy bills that passed the House and Senate last month each include provisions that would block public reporting on greenhouse gas emissions by military contractors, according to a new open letter from more than two dozen activist groups and research organizations.

“[W]e urge you to ensure that this bill is not used to protect defense contractors from accounting for their role in driving climate change,” they wrote in a letter addressed to the leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees. “In a budget authorization that expands funding for the most polluting sector of our government yet again, this carve-out for defense contractors is a particularly egregious attempt to shirk even the possibility of future emissions reductions.”

The letter’s signatories include the Center for International Policy, Just Foreign Policy, the Project on Government Oversight, Win Without War and the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft.

The open letter comes amid a growing debate over how to balance America’s world-spanning military — which emits more greenhouse gasses each year than most countries — with the Biden administration’s efforts to fight climate change. Researchers have been able to get reasonable estimates of the Pentagon’s annual emissions, but data on emissions produced by weapons contractors is far harder to come by and often relies on back-of-the-napkin math. Research from Neta Crawford of Brown University suggests that the U.S. military industry may actually emit more than the Department of Defense itself.

The White House proposed a regulation last year that would force all major federal contractors to disclose their emissions and create a plan to reduce them, but lawmakers in both chambers of Congress quietly added carve-outs for the defense industry in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The Senate NDAA includes provisions that would remove the emissions reporting requirements for “nontraditional defense contractors” and place a two-year moratorium on the regulation for the rest of the weapons industry. This is tantamount to “attempting to run out the clock on federal enforcement of the rule, likely in hopes that a different administration will roll it back completely,” the letter argues.

The House version of the NDAA is more direct. It completely bans the implementation of the policy as well as “any substantially similar rule” and exempts the military from an executive order aimed at fighting climate change.

Given the differences in the two NDAAs, the administration will have a chance to argue against these carve-outs as the bills go to conference. But it remains to be seen whether the White House will be able to find a deal to protect the regulation.


Photo: ItzaVU via shutterstock.com
Global Crises
Trump ASEAN
Top photo credit: U.S. President Donald Trump looks at Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., next to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim when posing for a family photo with leaders at the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, October 26, 2025. Vincent Thian/Pool via REUTERS

‘America First’ meets ‘ASEAN Way’ in Kuala Lumpur

Asia-Pacific

The 2025 ASEAN and East Asia Summits in Kuala Lumpur beginning today are set to be consequential multilateral gatherings — defining not only ASEAN’s internal cohesion but also the shape of U.S.–China relations in the Indo-Pacific.

President Donald Trump’s participation will be the first by a U.S. president in an ASEAN-led summit since 2022. President Biden skipped the last two such summits in 2023 and 2024, sending then-Vice President Harris instead.

keep readingShow less
iran, china, russia
Top photo credit: Top image credit: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi shake hands as Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu looks on during their meet with reporters after their meeting at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025 in Beijing, China. Lintao Zhang/Pool via REUTERS

'Annulled'! Russia won't abide snapback sanctions on Iran

Middle East

“A raider attack on the U.N. Security Council.” This was the explosive accusation leveled by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov this week. His target was the U.N. Secretariat and Western powers, whom he blamed for what Russia sees as an illegitimate attempt to restore the nuclear-related international sanctions on Iran.

Beyond the fiery rhetoric, Ryabkov’s statement contained a message: Russia, he said, now considers all pre-2015 U.N. sanctions on Iran, snapped back by the European signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) — the United Kingdom, France, Germany — “annulled.” Moscow will deepen its military-technical cooperation with Tehran accordingly, according to Ryabkov.

This is more than a diplomatic spat; it is the formal announcement of a split in international legal reality. The world’s major powers are now operating under two irreconcilable interpretations of international law. On one side, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany assert that the sanctions snapback mechanism of the JCPOA was legitimately triggered for Iran’s alleged violations. On the other, Iran, Russia, and China reject this as an illegitimate procedural act.

This schism was not inevitable, and its origin reveals a profound incongruence. The Western powers that most frequently appeal to the sanctity of the "rules-based international order" and international law have, in this instance, taken an action whose effects fundamentally undermine it. By pushing through a legal maneuver that a significant part of the Security Council considers illegitimate, they have ushered the world into a new and more dangerous state. The predictable, if imperfect, framework of universally recognized Security Council decisions is being replaced by a system where legal facts are determined by political interests espoused by competing power blocs.

This rupture followed a deliberate Western choice to reject compromises in a stand-off with Iran. While Iran was in a technical violation of the provisions of the JCPOA — by, notably, amassing a stockpile of highly enriched uranium (up to 60% as opposed to the 3.67% for a civilian use permissible under the JCPOA), there was a chance to avert the crisis. In the critical weeks leading to the snapback, Iran had signaled concessions in talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Cairo, in terms of renewing cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s inspectors.

keep readingShow less
On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants
Top Photo Credit: (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)

On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants

Europe

While diplomats labored to produce the Dayton Accords in 1995, then-Secretary of Defense Bill Perry advised, “No agreement is better than a bad agreement.” Given that Washington’s allies in London, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw are opposed to any outcome that might end the war in Ukraine, no agreement may be preferable. But for President Trump, there is no point in equating the illusion of peace in Ukraine with a meaningless ceasefire that settles nothing.

Today, Ukraine is mired in corruption, starting at the very highest levels of the administration in Kyiv. Sending $175 billion of borrowed money there "for however long it takes" has turned out to be worse than reckless. The U.S. national sovereign debt is surging to nearly $38 trillion and rising by $425 billion with each passing month. President Trump needs to turn his attention away from funding Joe Biden’s wars and instead focus on the faltering American economy.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.