The media at present is full of comments about having a war that will stimulate the economy, at least in reconstruction. And this concern over war and the costs of war prompted me to investigate the relative costs of military funding and environmental funding. So here is a very coarse look at the relative positions of military funding and environmental funding in a few western countries. All the numbers are approximate and refer to 2016 and possibly 2017 budgets, and all are in billions of dollars.
Military expenditures by countries are easiest to obtain, and here are a few for the most recent years I could find:
United States: $ 611 billion
China: $ 216
Russia: $ 69
Saudi Arabia: $ 64
Australia: $ 24
Canada: $ 15.5
Environmental funding is much more difficult to decompose because different countries amalgamate different agencies into one Department. Consequently, comparisons are best made within one country rather than between countries. Here are a few details for particular agencies:
USA Department of the Interior $ 13.4 1 military year = 46 Dept. years
NOAA $ 5.77 1 military year = 106 NOAA years
Canada Environment Canada $ 0.987 1 military year = 16 EC years
Australia CSIRO $ 0.803 1 military year = 30 CSIRO years
Clearly there are many problems with these simple comparisons. NOAA for example includes agencies covering Marine Fisheries, Weather Service, Environmental Satellites, Aviation Operations, and Oceanic Research among other responsibilities. CSIRO includes divisions dealing with agriculture, climate change, and mining research. I am sure that someone has done a more detailed analysis of these comparisons, but the general message is very clear: the environment is a low priority among western nations, and if you want a rough number one might say the military is about 30 times more “important” than the environment when it comes to funding. If you look for example at the Australian budget for 2017 (http://budget.gov.au/2017-18/content/glossies/overview/download/Budget2017-18-Overview.pdf ) and search for the word ‘environment’ as in the real biophysical environment, you will find not a single case of this word appearing. It is as though the biophysical environment does not exist as a problem in 2017.
I am not clear if anyone worries about these simple facts. The general problem is that federal government budgets are made so complex and presented so poorly that it is nearly impossible to separate out different equivalent expenditures. Thus for example the military argues that it does scientific research with part of its funding, and universities fail to point out that some of their basic research focuses on military questions rather than questions that might benefit humanity (Smart 2016).
I hope that others might look into these expenditures in more detail, and that in the long run we might be more aware of where our tax dollars go. The simple suggestion that the last page of our tax file should give us a choice of what general areas we would like to support with our taxes would be a start. On the last list I saw of 25 ‘items of interest’ to taxpayers who might like more information, the words ‘environment’, ‘conservation’, or ‘sustainability’ never appeared. We should demand this be changed.
Smart, B. (2016). Military-industrial complexities, university research and neoliberal economy. Journal of Sociology 52, 455-481. doi: 10.1177/1440783316654258