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They've had lots of listener questions about the climate impact of military conflicts.

You can listen to the episode right here. War leaves a visible trail of destruction. The loss of life, homes destroyed, cities reduced to rebel. But there's another consequence that's rarely talked about. One that's mostly invisible, yet felt everywhere on the planet.

“This week, we're asking what's the climate cost of war?”

From the BBC world service, this is the climate question and I'm Gray Jackson. A huge thank you to all of you who got in touch with this about this topic, including Kaka from Czech Republic and James on YouTube. A quick note before we start. We'd already planned the show long before the US is real war with Iran erupted. And we're recording this four days after the initial strikes on the country.

The US has struck an Iranian navy ship off the coast of Sri Lanka. A hundred and forty people have thought to be missing after that attack. While Iran has targeted US allies across the Middle East, firing drones and missiles on Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. But our focus isn't who's right and who's wrong.

We're looking instead at the climate impact of military activity, something that remains relevant no matter the conflict. So let me introduce you to the guests who are going to help us unpack that. In the studio an associate professor at Queen Mary University London, who looks at the environmental impact of war.

Welcome, Dr Benjamin Nymark. Thank you so much for having me. And also joining us is the author of the Pentagon Climate Change and War, charting the rise and fall of US military emissions. At the University of Sid Andrews in the UK,

Professor of International Relations, Nita Crawford, Hainita. Hello. Now my understanding is that you can kind of divide this two ways. You can look at the carbon footprint of wartime activities and also the carbon footprint of

militaries in peace time. So let's just look at the former first with you, Benjamin, if I may. Do we know what the overall carbon cost of war is? We are measuring it. We are estimating what might be the carbon footprint of war.

For example, we studied the carbon footprint of the Gaza war.

We found that 33.2 million tons of CO2 were released when you think about conflict activities,

but also pre-conflict activities, sort of the building of defensive structures, such as the Israel iron fence that encircled Gaza, and also Hamas's deep wide and long tunnels or tunnel networks. It's not just the bombs, it's the stuff, the defensive stuff that came before. Right, but also the reconstruction after.

Right, 33 million tons of CO2 equivalent put that number into context for me. Well, if we want to think about it into context, it's the value equal to about the total carbon uptake of about 33 million acres of first in a year, or the annual missions of a medium small country such as Jordan. So it's significant, then?

Yeah, quite significant, and it's intense.

“And how does that compare to Russia's large scale invasion of Ukraine?”

So we have to be careful also about comparing wars. Every war is different, right? Geography, topography, the ecological sensitivity, the number of countries involved, the type of weapons used, these are all play a significant factor in dictating the environmental and climate footprint.

Russia's invasion, Ukraine is ongoing, but it was doubled the time, right? So this Rojas War was like two years, now we're into the fourth year, right, of the Ukraine War.

More though, nonetheless? Yeah, so you're also thinking about the front, right?

“So the front of the war is also much, much bigger, right?”

So the 1200 kilometers. If you think about Israel, the distribution is around Gaza, you're only thinking about roughly the width of New Jersey. So you're thinking about stationing that huge border, transporting food up and down that border, medicine, I mean all sorts of concrete bunkers, fortifications,

also in Ukraine researchers have found that forest fires of natural landscapes have released a

significant amount, roughly 22% of the war's carbon footprint, just fires alone.

I know you said that no war is identical, there are lots of different factors that contribute to whether a particular war might have a bigger or smaller carbon footprint. But what are the big contenders? Yeah, sure. Well, we know that some of the heavy hitters are, you know, in Gaza, the 100,000 tons of munitions that were dropped, or the 900,000 liters of fuel of jet engine fuel, or the heavy diesel from tanks. These are all probably the real

“heavy carbon emitters in this war. However, we need to remember that 7% of global emissions”

of CO2 emissions are from the roasting and clinkification, what they call the clinkification, of cement, which then makes concrete. This is really a significant hit in your mission that we find. And then I think what is probably the largest emitting factor is the reconstruction, right? So if you think about all that concrete that then is going to need to be relayed, from the steel as well, which is still a big part, you know, and then the restocking

of all these munitions and the weapons. Okay, I mean I feel like this is a really good point to bring a new need to, because I know this is something that you look at a lot. And I'd really like to talk about this in the context of the US is really war with Iran, because that's predominantly been airstrikes, right? And these attacks have been launched from US military bases in that region, which is only possible because of that presence. They have there, right? How does that all come

together in terms of when looking at their climate emissions? We have to think about the US military as switching airstrikes. There is nothing like it in the world. So the United States has between 700 and 800 international overseas bases. So as you mentioned, some of the strikes in the work occur from those bases that are already there in Saudi Arabia. United States also has 12 aircraft carriers, and it moves aircraft carriers into war zones when it needs them, and those have short-range

fighters, and then the United States also flies aircraft the B2 from the United States continent, and that's a 17-hour round trip, and that's a lot of fuel too. So making war for the United States is both easy because of its tremendously long range capabilities and in prepositioning,

but also because it can move these basically floating bases anywhere any time.

Ben? Yeah, well, you also have to think about something like the F-35 lightning right this stealth bomber. Right, it's just an incredibly carbon-intensive piece of equipment.

“I think what we're seeing is a real push towards, and although we're not completely off of the sort”

of traditional warfare, you're seeing a lot of these aerial drones, and one might think that these might be less carbon-intensive, but again, the manufacturing of these drones, and a lot of these drones are one way, right? I don't think they didn't come back. Well, no, I mean, they used to be during the Iraq War, whatnot. We used the M-Q9 Reaper, or Predator back then, but now it's the Reaper right, and this was the idea where you would have a drone that does return, right? It's piloted

remotely. Now you have this drone that is essentially built to detonate on site and not come back, right? So you have all these other environmental effects from that. I want to come back to this idea that warfare is kind of changing, and what that might mean for this sort of overall footprint of wars as we move forward. But, Nita, I just wanted to talk briefly about the sort of the climate cost of peace time, military and peace time, because as you've alluded to, there's so much more

going on than just the wartime emissions. Could you give us a sense of what those things are, what the big emitters are if you like? Well, any military of the size and capability that the United States has, and again, it's all by itself in a class on its own, has domestic and overseas bases, which require heat and electricity and cooling and water, and that's about 30% of US military

that is the training and the exercises, either bilateral or multilateral exercises, there's a lot of

emissions as well. So, operations in any given year or about 70% of the emissions. Now, you can get some efficiencies with changing aircraft, but you're not going to change the F-35, which uses 2.3 gallons gallons per mile, not miles per gallon. In peace time and wartime, no matter what it's doing, you're not going to get significant efficiencies there. And then a country like the United States

“can be a peace time, but remember that it's constantly mobilized and circulating, it's forces,”

at any one time, seven or so of the aircraft carriers are out circling. Now, the aircraft carriers

themselves are nuclear power, but they have generally 10 diesel powered ships that go along with them

to protect the aircraft carriers, which are of the projection of power. So, anytime you're engaged in sort of the demonstration or the pre-deployment of U.S. force, you're using operational fuel. And you also see during peace time, the same kinds of fires that you see during wartime, in wartime, the fires are deliberately set oftentimes, or sometimes they're for a satellite. Accidentally, but often they're deliberately set. There are wildfires that come from training,

and we've seen this really near U.S. bases and on U.S. bases in Hawaii, most recently.

So, you can see emissions from the natural environment.

We've talked a lot about the U.S. other countries with massive militaries that are having a similar sort of impact. Well, no, the United States spends three times more than it's what it calls, it's here competitor, but it's not really competitive China, and it has a much larger overseas

“footprint than China and Russia. They are building up in part in response to the U.S., but I think”

when you look at countries like the U.K., and France, and Germany, they're also building up. They're increasing their military spending. And what we know is that when military spending increases emissions go up. Right. So, why does more spending drive the whole economy and therefore more emissions? The main driver for the United States, for example, of their military industrial emissions is procurement of new weapons. Right. And so, when you procure these new weapons,

they have requirements, they're called, that is, characteristics that are higher than civilian characteristics. So, they have to fly at 70,000 feet at mock three, and they need to have ships and submarines that can operate in harsh environments. So, these are highly engineered, and therefore,

“you know, the materials that go into them as well are sweet generous unique, right? So, they require”

Boeing and Lockheed Martin and company to make equipment for them. That's greenhouse gas intensive to make. So, the materials are greenhouse gas intensive, but also because they're bespoke. It also drives up emissions as well. Some of it's the fact that it's bespoke that's correct, and some of it is that the materials themselves are not the same as civilian sector. Dr. Nymark mentioned, for example, the concrete that's required. It's not just concrete for bunkers, it's concrete for runways.

Just the entire apparatus requires very greenhouse gas intensive materials as common as concrete, but as uncommon as the material in the wing of stealth fighter. This is part of the reason it goes up. And then the other thing is when countries militarize their economies, the military industry, then tends to shape the civilian industry, right? So, those technologies get pushed out into the civilian industry, and those greenhouse gas intensive activities and economies shape

the civilian side. Just as they shape the US side, post-World War II, for example, when the United States decided that it needed an interstate and defense highway system to transport its military equipment to the different costs. That interstate and defense highway system facilitated the suburbanization of the United States, which then drove the car industry. So, built more cars. So, you changed the entire economy of the United States in fact to suit the military requirements,

but it ends up shaping the civilian economy lifestyles long after. Okay, so given everything you've said, you said you've been looking and calculating the

of global activities, the global emissions? Well, there's been some calculations that have

“estimated that it's around 5% of global emissions, which would make the military sector”

itself larger than most countries, or many countries combined. We know that the United States alone

at 47 million metric tons of annual emissions at peacetime is larger than many countries. It's

annual military emissions are larger than many countries. So, we have a sense. Yes. Why don't we have more accurate and better data? Military don't report their emissions. Okay. There's a history to this. They were exempt from the Kyoto Protocol in particular from intense lobbying from the US. It was in the late 90s, wasn't it? Yeah. And then military emissions reporting to the United Nations framework convention on climate change, then became voluntary during

the Paris agreements. And since then, we've not had very clear and transparent reporting from

“militaries. Right. So, you have some data points and you're kind of connecting the dots and making”

your best estimate from there. And I guess the sort of argument that I've had at least for why

militaries don't want to report their emissions is that they don't want to give away any sort of idea to potential enemies of what they might have in terms of defense and also do you took a deep breath there, then? Yeah. Well, it's a national security argument. Yes. And it's a bit disingenuous because it doesn't take much to sort of get an inventory of what most militaries have. Right. And so, it doesn't necessarily make a country any less safe.

I remind you that you're listening to the climate question from the BBC World Service. We focus on the part of the internet that most people don't know about, it's called the Dark Web.

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Hi everyone, this is Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. And we want to tell you about pivot our twice weekly podcast. That's like Kara, what a thrill. It depends for us to break down all the big things happening in tech, business, and politics. Yes, and I keep you in checks who people can make it through each episode, whether it's digging into a constant change in the world of AI and social media or trying to keep up with whatever the f*** Elon is doing.

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please leave us a rating and review. It helps us grow. This week, we're talking about the climate cost of war with Professor Nita Crawford and Dr Benjamin Nymark. Nita, let's turn to whether the military codes decarbonise. Could the military hypothetically reduce its carbon footprint and what do you think would be the best ways to do that in your opinion? Well, interestingly, United States has reduced its carbon footprint

with the military and they've done it a couple of ways. One is like the rest of the world's economies, it has moved away from coal at its installations and that dramatically reduced the emissions from the burning of coal and it has moved more to natural gas. It has used LED and its ships for light bulbs. It's gotten microefficiencies and these kinds of macroefficiencies. And that has meant that its emissions have gone down for training and at some bases. But the real savings would be to

change the training and operations of militaries and to reduce their bases. For instance,

Iraq, it did close some of its bases and withdraw some of its forces. But it did not withdraw

as many as it could have. There's still tens of thousands of US troops and lots of equipment working with allies there. And given that much of that force was there to protect oil, access to oil, which the United States can buy on the open market. It's really possible then to reduce the size of the footprint. And then what would be required is a rethinking of US military doctrine as a whole. To think about in each region what is actually required to deter.

The idea of reducing bases that I'm wondering how realistic that is given the rising

global tensions that we're seeing. So the important thing here is that international security

is kind of an action reaction phenomenon. It's called a security dilemma. What I do to protect myself may be perceived as threatening to you. So when we're in a cycle of increased tension, as we've been in the last, say, 24 months or so, what we see is countries increasing their military spending and then there ever series increase their military spending and you see spending and forces ratchet up. If we can get on a cycle where there's mutual and balanced force reductions,

“arms control, negotiations to resolve conflicts peacefully, then I think we can ratchet down,”

but it requires rethinking or thinking more creatively and not reaching for the weapons you

have just because they're out and available and looking at the entire toolbox. Just to follow up here, military are already decarbonizing in a way they're electrifying, right, their bases, their equipment, drones, for example, we mentioned before. In some ways, whether they like it or not, they're detethering from fossil fuel infrastructure, which is bloody, which is expensive, which is a security risk, right? If we look at the huge oil terminal in

Saudi Arabia right now, which is being targeted by drones. And so there is a significant movement, particularly on bases, as we mentioned before, there's a lot of electrification, there's a lot of solar panels going up, right? So there you do have a shift in the way in which bases are getting their power sources from. There's also another kind of factor here, whereas military's sea climate change as a problem in particular with extreme weather, right? Hard to land in

up 35 on a melted tarmac, or move humvies around when the bases flood. And so extreme weather is something that military are really concerned with. How are they going to operate in a future,

“landscape that is clearly, climatically changed, altered? So it's a strategic aspect to this, right?”

Some electrified humvies, they give off less heat signatures and they're quieter, right? And so there's a strategic aspect to the way in which they might electrify. Because they can't be spotted, it's easily interesting. I mean, the other sort of big thing that we haven't talked about is the fact that climate change could drive more instability, and that could inflate the emissions from military's more, right, Nita? Yes. It used to be the case that Malta is didn't think too much

about climate change. They began to think a lot more about climate change when they appreciated that instability could follow. And in particular, people have been concerned about mass migration away from places which are too hot or too wet for people to live. So you can solve the mass migration problem many different ways, but one of them is to sort of put up walls and prevent people from entering, create a sort of lifeboat system where your country is self-sufficient and others can

just spend for themselves. The other thing that people have been concerned about is whether they're be conflict over material like lithium. And this resource war notion is alive and well, also among militaries. The idea that civil unrest could break out. All of these are concerns that militaries have raised with regard to the changes that are being brought by increased carbon dioxide in the

“atmosphere and rising sea levels and so on. So I think that again could be addressed by greater”

militarization or we could look to the roots of these problems and solve them another way. Military think of climate changes at threat multiplier, but it doesn't have to be the threats that are multiplied. The challenges are multiplied and for instance, you can deal with civil unrest

kind of assistance is money better spent actually than military spending. It is better to spend money

“to help countries that are in places that are vulnerable and reduce the pressures rather than to”

defend against what you think might happen or may or may not happen, but to spend that money

on sort of built and suspenders approaches inefficient. I'm afraid to that is where we have to

leave it today. Oh, did you just get into it? I know, I'm sorry. Professor Nita Crawford,

“Dr. Benjamin Nymar. Thank you so much for joining me. Stay on the climate question.”

Thank you, Greg. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

And thank you for listening. As you've heard today, we love answering your questions. So if you have one, please do email. It's the climate question at bbc.com and we'll try and answer it

“in a future show. Thank you so much to our production team. They were Diane Richardson, Simon Watts,”

Grace Braddock, Phillip Bull and Tom Brigner. I'm Greg Jackson and I'll see you next time. Hi, all of a kind way from the global news podcast. Again, I hope you enjoyed that bonus episode. You can hear more from the climate question every week, wherever you get your bbc podcasts. Recently, the team have looked at the climate challenge facing winter sports, the green energy revolution in China and what Wales tell us about the state of our planet.

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