Arms Dealers Shoot Down Accountability

This month, the country’s four largest weapon manufacturers shot down proposals from their shareholders that would have required them to disclose how their largely opaque emissions-spewing practices align with climate change mitigation goals and human rights policies. 

Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing Company, and RTX Corporation, formerly known as Raytheon, are among the top five contractors working with the U.S. Department of Defense, bringing in billions of dollars in revenue. These companies have directly profited from the ongoing war on Gaza, producing weapons that have contributed to the deaths of more than 35,000 people. 

Along with the human toll, such weapons have a huge environmental impact. The Department of Defense is the single largest institutional fossil fuel user in the world, with Lockheed Martin producing 33 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 — the most of any company in the military sector. That’s comparable to the emissions produced by countries like Finland, Switzerland, and Ireland, and directly contributes to rising global temperatures.