Truth may well be the first casualty of war, but death, injury and environmental degradation are bound to be keeping up in the hit lists. Attacks on gas fields, oil refineries and petrochemical plants will always leave an impression once the conflict concludes. In the case of carbon emissions, the most challenging obstacle in collective efforts to stay the rise of the earth’s temperatures, the Iran War is doing much to throw everything out of kilter.
The gloomy modelling from the Climate and Community Institute shows that the first fortnight of the Iran War, which began on February 28 as a crime against peace pursued by Israel and the United States, produced some 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. To get a sense of proportion, the carbon pollution exceeded that of Iceland in one year. The institute, in arriving at such figures, considered the carbon emissions arising from destroyed homes and buildings, destroyed fuel, the fuel used in combat and support operations, equipment embodied carbon (equipment lost) and missiles and drones.
To give a sense of the granular detail, a Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter consumes roughly 5,600 to 6,500 litres of fuel during a single combat sortie lasting one-and-a-half to two hours. The emission of carbon dioxide during such a mission is approximately that of 14-17 tonnes, the lifespan of a conventional passenger vehicle. The company behind the production of the F-35 has also admitted that its sold products, in 2024, produced just under 14 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents.
The authors of the Climate and Community Institute report further note that carbon costs will only rise in sharp fashion if the war persists. Three reasons are postulated, and these do not even include such issues as the re-routing of commercial aviation traffic. Firstly, as US and Israeli arsenals suffer depletion, “embodied emissions of building new weapons, along with fuel used to deliver them to the region, will rise.” Secondly, the targeting of oil infrastructure in the region will result in the uncontrollable emission of fossil fuels, as what took place during the Gulf War. Thirdly, the deployment of more naval vessels by other states to the Middle East, including France and the United Kingdom, ostensibly to protect their interests, will increase “emissions via [a] ‘defensive’ posture.”
Things do not end there. The current obsession of the Trump administration’s pursuit of “energy dominance” will only see more fossil fuel production for reasons of energy security. Reconstruction in the aftermath of the war will also cause emissions. “Reconstructing infrastructure in the impacted region of 14 countries from Cypress to Azerbaijan – including homes, roads, hospitals, schools, oil and transport infrastructure – is not only costly but carbon intensive.” The authors note with grim awareness that the emissions arising from rebuilding Gaza and Lebanon after the conflict “will produce at least 24 times more than the emissions from the war alone.”
Other conflicts have also been appalling emitters. The hefty carbon footprint of the first 15 months of Israel’s campaign in Gaza arising from direct war activities, according to a multi-authored study published in April last year, exceeded the annual emissions of 36 individual countries and territories. The total emissions would increase to 41 lowest emitting countries and territories if Hamas’s tunnel network and Israel’s “Iron Wall” protective fence were also included. The authors arrive at a staggering figure of 32,275,089 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) when pre-conflict and post-conflict related construction activities are included. That final figure ranks higher than the annual emissions of 102 countries.
Broadly speaking, the Iran War has revealed how the continued reliance on fossil fuels is not only degrading in terms of environment but precarious in terms of security. “Fossil fuel dependency is ripping away national security and sovereignty, and replacing it with subservience and rising costs,” explains Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. To that end, renewable sources of energy must be pursued with greater vigour. “Meek dependence on fossil fuel imports,” he remarks, referring to European policy makers, “will leave Europe forever lurching from crisis to crisis.” Renewable energy, however, will “turn the tables. Sunlight doesn’t depend on narrow and vulnerable shipping straits.”
Brian Lee of Rethink Energy Florida builds on the theme with earnest seriousness, suggesting that “Energy security is climate security.” This is not a novel pairing; any serious policy in that sense “would treat accelerating renewable energy development not as an environmental gesture, but as a national imperative.” Doing so would set “clear limits on the level of sea-level rise our coastal economies can endure as a second metric to the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees C temperature increase limit – and align policy to stay below both.”
War has a nasty habit of suspending agendas and supplanting them with a murderous lunacy that becomes, for the duration of hostilities, dull and commonplace. Important, pressing topics get marooned along the way. When peace breaks out, those neglected topics return with a vengeance. Along with the staining criminality of those who have soiled the peace, climate change is exactly one of those things, something that will storm back to the fore with menacing consequences.
Keep Independent Journalism Alive – Support The AIMN
Dear Reader,
Since 2013, The Australian Independent Media Network has been a fearless voice for truth, giving public interest journalists a platform to hold power to account. From expert analysis on national and global events to uncovering issues that matter to you, we’re here because of your support.
Running an independent site isn’t cheap, and rising costs mean we need you now more than ever. Your donation – big or small – keeps our servers humming, our writers digging, and our stories free for all.
Join our community of truth-seekers. Please consider donating now via:
PayPal or credit card – just click on the Donate button below
Direct bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
We’ve also set up a GoFundMe as a dedicated reserve fund to help secure the future of our site.
Your support will go directly toward covering essential costs like web hosting renewals and helping us bring new features to life. Every contribution, no matter the size, helps us keep improving and growing.
Thank you for standing with us – we truly couldn’t do this without you.
With gratitude, The AIMN Team
This has been my concern for some time . We are really at war on 2 separate fronts . Who knows which will knock us out first? But neither is pretty , and we, all of us, can only be the losers .
Trump and his war-mongering maniac executive don’t give a fig for carbon emissions, global warming, climate change or pollution with for-ever chemicals so reasoned criticism about such matters will fall on deaf ears in USA.
Thanks anyway Binoy for discussing this matter openly.
Just another good reason for impeaching TACO Trumpery for stupidity, unthinking and lack of vision. But what did you expect from a geriatric, narcistic, four times bankrupt convicted felon lining the pockets of related entities with all the benefits of likely corrupt practices against the best interests of American citizens and the world.
Thank you Dr Kampmark for keeping an eye on an overlooked dimension of this unspeakable folly of murderous and hideous destruction.
Poor old Mama Earth. Not happy with sucking her dry, pathetic humanity is now blowing her to bits.
Yes, well, of course, anyone who is a warmonger is also de facto a destroyer of the planet. Homo sapiens, as it turns out, is a rare misnomer attributed by the great Carl Linnaeus (to whom we owe eternal credit for his creation of the binomial classification system of all living things) who believed, perhaps correctly at the time, that we were a wise species. History has proved otherwise. Given the age of the universe, approximately 13.8 billion years, and that of the planet Earth, approximately 4.54 billion years, and that of the above-mentioned human species, approximately 300,000 years, it’s somewhat sobering to consider that the humans have been on earth for only 0.0066% of this planet’s age, and yes, have managed to pretty well wreck it.
I’ve said this many times before, and I know I’m not alone in this respect with regard to this observation, but there’s something deeply flawed, deeply wrong, with the human psyche. We’ll wreck the planet, die out in a mass extinction, and, as they do everywhere else in the universe, processes will continue, and the Great Intelligence will mark the human experiment up on the chalkboard as a failure.
Sick World, by Cranky Curlew Productions up on Magnetic Island.
Thanks Binoy.
All wars by humans have the same results – always a conflagration, it’s simply that with increasing (war) efficiency over time, the deleterious effects become greater.
Even without Nuclear bombing, so-called conventional war now toxifies and irradiates with depleted uranium in addition to carbon emissions and tens of thousands of other deadly chemicals liberated.
All warlords (usually in the name of some god(s) of the superstitious) engender chains of paranoia and psychopathy that leads to manufacture for killing, to death, destruction and environmental devastation.
America progressing from its very beginnings, now tops the list of warlord states, saturated with paranoia and psychopathy, aided and abetted by white Christian evangelists. And, of course war machines. It has sent itself financially and morally bankrupt by these means, and persists in spreading these bankruptcies globally.
The human species is the only one to foul its own nest, to a point where I suspect it will become uninhabital. There is no Plan B.
I’m with Shevill.
Earth’s Greatest enemy, a film by Abby Martin, who is doing loads of interviews at the moment and is well worth listening to imo.
https://earthsgreatestenemy.com/