So, apparently they’re having a war in Europe, now. This could be bad, like, really bad. I’ll leave commenting on geopolitics to somebody else, though, and simply write a post about war and climate change.
Climate Change Causing War
An online search on “climate change and war” reveals a lot more articles talking about how climate change makes war worse, rather than the other way around. Apparently, the official word is that climate change doesn’t cause war but does increase the risk of war. This seems disingenuous to me. It’s true that climate change cannot give orders for the tanks to roll, but neither can anything else other than a human being in charge of tanks. All other causes of war, including economics, hatred, and religion, are, technically, risk factors. We speak of them as causes anyway. We know what we mean.
Climate change increases the likelihood and severity of extreme weather events, which in turn cause economic problems and humanitarian crises. Such crises in turn can cause wars, depending on the political and cultural issues involved. I’ve written before of the role of climate change in various refugee crises, so it’s not like this is some problem of the looming future–it’s been happening already.
Any degrees of large-scale violence can also exacerbate the impact of climate change by making extreme weather harder to deal with. For example, it’s harder to migrate out of a drought-stricken area if there is a war in the way. In general, people subject to abuse, neglect, and want suffer more from climate change than the privileged and affluent do, and war increases the likelihood of abuse, neglect, and want dramatically.
But that’s not what I meant when I wanted to write about war and climate change.
Does War Cause Climate Change?
I had thought this one was a no-brainer. Militaries in general are responsible for an estimated 6% of global carbon emissions, simply in the course of existing, and militaries generally get bigger and more active during a war. We can’t lay the whole problem at the feet of the war machine, but surely we can lay some of it there?
(The interrelationships between war, capitalism, and industrialism are such that you could probably build a plausible argument that the three are so intertwined as to leave war entirely responsible for climate change, but you could construct several opposing arguments just as easily. Let’s stick to direct connections for now)
I was surprised to learn a different set of assumptions is widely current.
Apparently, the thinking is that since carbon emissions decrease when the economy slows, and war slows economic growth, war ought to slow climate change?
Strange, I’ve always heard “war is good for business,” and that World War II was the economic engine that pulled the United States out of the Great Depression–and that Cold War militarization was part of what kept us humming along economically for decades afterwards. Had I heard wrong?
Regardless, the authors of a report on the subject (which I just linked to–here’s the link again) acknowledge that the connection between climate and war is more than economic. Sources of war-related emissions include:
- Deliberate destruction of fossil-fuel infrastructure, such as the firing of the Iraqi oilfields in the First Iraq War
- Weaponized deforestation, such as when the United States killed some 40% of the forests of Southeast Asia in the Vietnam War
- Weaponized destruction of wetlands, such as when the Iraqi government attacked dissident groups who lived in wetlands by draining 90% of the Mesopotamian Marshes in the 1990’s
- The loss of government oversight allowing more intensive environmental exploitation–basically people polluting more or harvesting more because nobody is paying attention
- The loss of economic stability and trade forcing people into unsustainable practices to survive
- The continued use of old, inefficient technologies that might have been upgraded had a war not gotten in the way
- The carbon footprint of the clean-up effort after the fighting if over
- The carbon footprint of post-war rebuilding efforts
- Armed conflicts can also increase climate change by means other than emissions, such as soot or other factors darkening large ice-fields
None of the above includes the emissions of the militaries themselves, since that was covered in a separate report. These sources include:
- Fuel use, especially by airplanes and ships
- Production and shipment of military equipment and supplies
- Waste disposal, often conducted in very polluting ways (environmental regulations don’t generally apply to militaries)
All of the above is nearly impossible to quantify, however, since the militaries of the world either don’t provide information about their own environmental impact, or provide such information in ways that are misleading or incomplete. At the insistence of the United States, militaties are exempt from Paris climate targets, too.
The overall attitude seems to be that the war machine is simply more important than the planet.
What About THIS War?
Honestly, given that Russia is such a major player in the fossil fuel industry, I had guessed that Mr. Putin’s aggression must have something to do with an attempt to improve business. A cursory investigation on my part suggests this is not so.
Ukraine does produce coal, natural gas, and petroleum, but it is a net importer of fuel by a large margin. Unless the plan is to take the fuel and leave Ukraine without, taking over the country will not give Russia more fuel to sell. Currently, Ukraine’s role in Russia’s energy sector is as a customer and as a transit country–fuel travels across it on the way to market. Conceivably gaining tighter control over that transit could be a motivation, but control over transit is worthless if you don’t have a market to transit to–and Europe and the United States are retaliating against Russia by buying less of its oil and natural gas.
It doesn’t look as though any fossil fuel economy is going to come out ahead on this one, except possibly some of the other transit countries that could benefit now that Russia won’t get to use its pipeline under the Baltic for a while.
In fact, Europe seems interested now in getting out of Russian natural gas entirely, and while they may buy instead from other countries, such as the United States (no, I don’t think this war will be good for American business overall), it’s quite possible renewables and greater energy efficiency will fill in the gap instead. Something similar could happen in the United States if fuel prices remain high. Total use of natural gas could actually go down.
Perhaps war (huh!) is not good for absolutely nothing after all.
(on balance, it’s very bad news, though)
The Climate in Emergency 