Neta Crawford, an international relations professor at the University of Oxford in England, received the prize for the ideas in her “The Pentagon, Climate Change and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of Military Emissions” published by MIT Press in 2022.

The U.S. military is the world’s largest single institutional producer of greenhouse gases, Crawford found. Between 1975 and 2022, its emissions averaged 81 million metric tons of greenhouse hydrocarbons a year—more than most countries. After it reduced operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, its emissions dropped to an annual average of 51 million metric tons, a level that still poses more risk to human existence than most military conflicts, she found.

“The Pentagon looks at the world in terms of threats but doesn’t see its own emissions as part of the problem,” she said. “If it’s going to successfully switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy, it must stop defending oil-rich countries and develop a different approach to national security.”

is the first scholar to thoroughly assess the U.S. military’s global emissions profile and weigh its implications, said Charles Ziegler, who directs the world order award.

“She convincingly explains how the military’s dependence on fossil fuels and consequent need to defend the sources of those fuels leads to a cycle of demand, consumption, militarization and conflict,” Ziegler said. “She also explains how the Pentagon can do more to make life on our planet sustainable.”

Crawford, Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford since 2021, also codirects the Costs of War Project, a non-partisan effort at Brown University assessing the human and financial costs of U.S. wars. She was inducted into the British Academy and American Academy of Arts and Sciences earlier this year and won an International Studies Association distinguished scholar award in 2018.

Recipients of next year’s are being named this week pending formal trustee approval. The annual, $100,000 prizes also honor seminal ideas in music, psychology, education and religion. Winners will visit Louisville in the spring to accept their awards and give free talks on their winning ideas.

In partnership with the Kentucky Department of Agriculture and the University of Kentucky Agriculture Department, UofL researchers have planted hemp in a 40-by-40-foot plot adjacent to the center offices in The Phoenix House on the Belknap Campus. Nearby plots will be planted with switchgrass and kenaf, two other plants that have similar potential as fuels.

Unlike its better-known relative, marijuana, industrial hemp has none of the chemicals that produce a “high” for its users, making it worthless as a recreational drug. The hemp plant does, however, boast long, dense fibers that already are proving valuable in some manufacturing applications. It also has a woody core that may be effective once compressed as a supplement to or replacement for fossil fuels.

Research will be carried out by Jagannadh Satyavolu, biofuels theme leader at the Conn Center; Noppodon Sathitsuksanoh, assistant professor of chemical engineering; and Eric Berson, associate professor of chemical engineering.

Seven other Kentucky universities are conducting research on hemp, but UofL is the only one focusing on the plant as a fuel resource.

“Hemp is cleaner and cheaper to produce than coal, oil or other resources,” said Mahendra Sunkara, professor of chemical engineering and director of the Conn Center. “It could solve many of the nation’s future energy needs while providing a new, lucrative cash crop for Kentucky’s farmers.”

In addition to using the plot for research, the Conn Center will use the planting to educate the public on the uses for and benefits of industrial hemp.

“We want to eliminate the stigma that is attached to hemp,” said Andrew Marsh, the center’s assistant director. “When people learn the characteristics of the crop and understand its potential for economic development, we think they will become advocates for its production.”

Photos of the hemp plots are .��