Biden’s budget request: $45B for climate, $813B for the Pentagon

Speaking Security Newsletter | Advisory Note for Activists and Candidates, n°150 | 28 March 2022

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Situation

The White House released Joe Biden’s budget request for fiscal year 2023 today, or at least a formal preview of the forthcoming full version. While the budget framework leaves a lot of stuff out, there’s more than enough in there to gauge the Biden administration’s priorities.

Analysis

Biden’s budget request is tantamount to climate change denialism and no amount of climate-conscious discourse changes that, although the White House certainly tried: In the funding proposal, the Biden administration mentions some version of “tackling the climate crisis” like 11 different times. However, there’s not enough climate money in the spending plan ($44.9 billion) to take these assurances seriously.

All told, military spending makes up more than 51% of Biden’s $1.6 trillion FY2023 spending proposal. Climate only makes less than 3%.

An underfunded climate response is a problem regardless of whether it’s accompanied by a radically overfunded military budget, but military-related emissions are a big reason why it makes the problem worse. Based on the most recently available data, the US military-industrial complex pollutes more than 171 countries.

-Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)

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