A study has revealed that President Donald Trump's plan to add $1 trillion to the Pentagon's 2026 spending budget would have a severe impact on annual carbon emissions from the United States.

The study, conducted by US-based research think tank the Climate and Community Institute (CCI), indicates the direct relationship between increased military spending by the Trump administration and its worsening impact on the climate.

Additional funding provided to the Pentagon's annual budget, enumerated in the Trump administration's "one big, beautiful" tax and spending bill, would add 26 megatons (Mt) of planet-heating gases, which is equivalent to carbon emissions that 68 gas power plants in Croatia could generate in a year, according to the study.

The Pentagon is receiving a 17% budget increase from what it spent the preceding year. This increase is also set to enlarge the Pentagon's total emissions of greenhouse gases to a 178 Mt of CO2e, which could also be calculated to an estimated $47 billion worth of global damages.

"The U.S. military is the world's largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases. Its vast global operations—from jet fuel consumption and overseas deployments to domestic base maintenance—produce immense carbon pollution, as does the manufacturing of all the weapons, ships, and planes that it operates," the study reads.

"The human cost of this funding increase will be immense, not just in terms of for what that money might have been put used for, but in as far as direct harms," it continues.

The GOP-backed federal budget for 2026 increases funding for border security and military spending while cutting spending on social safety nets and other provisions, such as science, education, Medicaid, food stamps, emergency management, the National Weather Service and humanitarian aid.

"Every extra dollar grows the Pentagon's carbon bootprint – and shrinks the chances for a livable future. With this additional funding from the big beautiful bill, the US's trillion-dollar war machine will be responsible for more emissions than 138 individual countries," Patrick Bigger, lead author and CCI research director, told The Guardian.

Originally published on Latin Times