The study, led by Ryan Thombs of Penn State University and published in PLOS Climate on July 2, drew on publicly available data from the DOD spanning 1975 to 2022, linking reductions in military spending to significant decreases in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Researchers found that a decrease in expenditures has a larger effect on slashing energy consumption than a rise in expenditures does on heightening energy usage. Additional analyses show that this is due to cuts in DOD energy consumption from facilities, vehicles and equipment, and jet fuel in particular.

“We started this study not entirely sure what we were going to find,” Thombs told Newsweek on Thursday. "There are published studies on the impacts of increasing militarization on environmental outcomes, but studying the effects of cutting military spending was an open question.

“I think the finding that cutting expenditures had a larger impact than increasing expenditures was a little bit surprising but made sense, and it is also the thing that really stood out in our analyses.”