In her on-campus lecture April 11, Neta Crawford, winner of the 2024 , described how in 2018, she began searching for data on the carbon emissions produced by the U.S. military. When she found the data was not readily available, she began calculating it herself. She found that the U.S. military was responsible for 81 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year–more than the total emissions for many entire countries.

Following that work and a related scientific paper, Crawford contributed language to a requirement by Congress that the U.S. military report some segments of its emissions beginning in 2021. In 2022, her ,��“The Pentagon, Climate Change and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of Military Emissions,” was published by MIT Press.

In her writings, Crawford traced how the United States and other military powers became dependent on large amounts of fossil fuel, from the quest for coal stations around the world in the 19^th Century to thousands of U.S. troops defending oil supplies in the Middle East today. She concluded that the legacy mentality requiring vast military presence and activity can and should change in order to reduce military emissions.

“I described how we got here, but the world doesn’t have to be that way. We could decrease the tens of thousands of forces in the Middle East, and then decrease their emissions which will help with climate change and potentially decrease tension.”

Citing reductions in U.S. oil imports from OPEC, Crawford said the need for the oil is lower, so military efforts to protect it also should be reduced.

“The U.S. is poised to defend oil that we cannot and should not burn. So, we are defending access to oil which we decreasingly need,” she said.

Crawford commended emission reduction programs in the military but called for bigger changes.

“The military has very good people looking at incremental ways to reduce their emissions. I’m talking about a much larger restructuring, though, and that’s not happening,” Crawford said.

“What I am arguing in the book is, first of all, count the emissions. Secondly, they don’t have to be as high. The military has shown, in fact, that they can decrease their emissions. They are not doing it very ambitiously, and they can. And this matters.”

The $100,000 Grawemeyer prizes also honor seminal ideas in , ,�������Ի���. Winners visit Louisville to accept their awards and give free talks on their winning ideas.

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UofL presents the annual prizes in music, world order, psychology, education and religion and gives the religion prize jointly with the seminary. All of the 2024 winners will visit Louisville in April to give free, public talks on their winning ideas.

The winners are:

• Aleksandra Vrebalov, a Serbian-American composer who won the music prize for a chorale work transcending a single language, culture or religion to express how all life is interconnected
• Neta Crawford, a University of Oxford international relations scholar who won the world order prize for analyzing the Pentagon’s carbon footprint and its effect on climate change
• Ann Masten, a University of Minnesota child development scholar who won the psychology prize for finding that resilience comes from “ordinary magic” within us and our supportive connections with others
• Laura Hamilton and Kelly Nielsen, two University of California sociologists who co-won the education prize for exploring the racial consequences of funding cuts at public universities
• The Rev. Charles Halton, an Episcopal priest in Lexington, Ky., who explained how embracing God as a being with human qualities can inspire us to become better people

“The Grawemeyer Awards recognize highly constructive ideas with world-changing potential and that’s certainly true of the ideas we’re honoring this time.” said Marion Hambrick, the awards program’s executive director.

Vrebalov shows how music can unite us despite our differences, while Crawford sheds new light on the U.S. military’s role in climate change. Masten explains why some people recover quickly from major setbacks when others don’t. Hamilton and Nielsen call for a fairer way to fund the nation’s public universities and Halton offers a fresh perspective on spiritual growth.

UofL graduate Charles Grawemeyer created the Grawemeyer Awards in 1984 with an initial endowment of $9 million. The first award, music composition, was presented in 1985. ����ֱ�� was added in 1989, religion in 1990, world order in 1998 and psychology in 2000.

Grawemeyer distinguished the awards by honoring ideas rather than lifelong achievement, also insisting that laypeople as well as professionals take part in the selection process.

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.