Aug. 14, 2023 - Download PDF Version

National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies is one of 27 organizations calling for the removal of anti-climate provisions in the final House and Senate NDAAs for Fiscal Year 2024. 

The letter addresses House and Senate leaders on parts of the annual military policy and spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), that would excuse big-time industrial military polluters from reporting their greenhouse gas emissions. The standing provisions versions of the bill passed by the House and Senate would go against a proposed federal rule that requires all federal suppliers to disclose emissions and climate-related financial risks, in addition to seven climate change mitigation executive orders by the Biden administration. 

The U.S. military is the largest institutional user of oil in the world, and the Pentagon is responsible for 75% of all U.S. federal government emissions. As climate change continues to ravage our skies, seas, lands, and our homes, vital actors in this crisis must step up and be held accountable for their damaging actions.

“We can’t be secure unless we take control of fossil fuel emissions, and military contractors have to be a part of that. We are under increasing threat from wildfires, heat waves, floods and storms. Basic transparency about their climate emissions is the bare minimum we should ask of military contractors,” says Lindsay Koshgarian, Program Director of the National Priorities Project.

You can read the full letter here. An excerpt of the letter, including all 27 signatures, is copied below:

August 14, 2023

Organizational Letter to Conferees Urging the Removal of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reporting and Reduction Measures in the FY24 NDAA

Dear Chairmen Reed and Rogers and Ranking Members Smith and Wicker, 

We represent a diverse array of climate justice, peace, faith-based, and government watchdog organizations. As the House of Representatives and the Senate undertake conference negotiations for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2024, we urge you to ensure that this bill is not used to protect defense contractors from accounting for their role in driving climate change. Specifically, we ask that the final text defend a draft federal emissions reporting rule by striking both Section 1822 of H.R.2670, titled “Limitation on funds relating to federal contractor disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risk,” and Section 820 of S.2226, titled “Prohibition on requiring defense contractors to provide information relating to greenhouse gas emissions.” We further ask that the final text strike Section 1050 of H.R.2670, “Prohibition on the use of funds to implement certain executive orders,” which seeks to roll back a series of climate change mitigation executive orders.

As a devastating heat dome sits parked over much of the southern United States, smoke from unprecedented wildfires in Canada repeatedly descends on our communities, and agricultural heartlands in the U.S. and globally experience scorching droughts, we urge Congress to protect the reporting regulations meant to inform and strengthen future climate change mitigation efforts.

…

Afghans For A Better Tomorrow

Alabama Interfaith Power & Light

Americans for Financial Reform

Center for International Policy

Climate Hawks Vote

Common Defense

Elders Climate Action

Foreign Policy for America

Franciscan Action Network

Just Foreign Policy

Lansing Area Peace Education Center

MADRE

Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns

Massachusetts Peace Action

National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies

Our Climate

Oxfam America

Peace Action

Physicians for Social Responsibility

Project on Government Oversight

Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

Southern Oregon Climate Action Now

Sustaining Way

The People’s Justice Council

Union of Concerned Scientists

United Church of Christ, Justice and Local Church Ministries

Win Without War