{"id":199145,"date":"2021-11-15T12:01:18","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T12:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=199145"},"modified":"2021-11-15T04:28:34","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T04:28:34","slug":"military-pollution-is-the-skeleton-in-the-wests-climate-closet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/11\/military-pollution-is-the-skeleton-in-the-wests-climate-closet\/","title":{"rendered":"Military Pollution Is the Skeleton in the West\u2019s Climate Closet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leaders at the COP26 summit have no intention of tackling the growing environmental impacts caused by their \u2018defence\u2019 spending.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Physicians for Social Responsibility<\/p><\/div>\n

8 Nov 2021<\/em> – World leaders gathered in Glasgow last week for the COP26 summit<\/a> in a bid to demonstrate how they are belatedly getting to grips with the climate crisis. Agreements to protect forests, cut carbon and methane emissions and promote green tech are all being hammered out in front of a watching world.<\/p>\n

Western politicians, in particular, want to emerge from the summit with their green credentials burnished, proving that they have done everything in their power to prevent a future global temperature rise of more than 1.5C. They fear the verdict of unhappy electorates if they come back empty-handed.<\/p>\n

Climate scientists are already doubtful whether the pledges being made go far enough<\/a>, or can be implemented fast enough, to make a difference. They have warned that drastic action has to be taken by the end of this decade to avert climate catastrophe.<\/p>\n

But the visible activity at the summit hides a much starker reality. The very nations proclaiming moral leadership in tackling the climate crisis are also the ones doing most to sabotage a meaningful agreement to reduce humanity\u2019s global carbon footprint.<\/p>\n

A photo from the opening<\/a> of COP26 showed British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the summit\u2019s host, warmly greeting US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. But rather than fete them, we should treat this triumvirate as the big villains of the climate talks.<\/p>\n

Their armed forces are the most polluting on the planet \u2013 and the goal at COP26 is to keep that fact a closely guarded secret.<\/p>\n

Hidden from view<\/h3>\n

US expenditure on its military far outstrips <\/a>that of any other country \u2013 except for Israel, when measured relative to population size. Although the UK trails behind, it still has the fifth largest military budget <\/a>in the world, while its arms manufacturers busily supply weapons to countries others have shunned.<\/p>\n

The US military alone is estimated to have a larger carbon footprint than most countries<\/a>. It is widely assumed to be the world\u2019s largest institutional consumer of crude oil<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And emissions from the West\u2019s militaries and arms makers appear to be growing each year<\/a>\u00a0rather than shrinking \u2013 though no one can be certain because they are being actively hidden from view.<\/p>\n

Washington insisted on an exemption<\/a> from reporting on, and reducing, its military emissions at the Kyoto summit, 24 years ago. Unsurprisingly, everyone else jumped on that bandwagon.<\/p>\n

Since the Paris summit of 2015, military emissions have been partially reported. But all too often the figures are disguised \u2013 lumped in with emissions from other sectors, such as transport.<\/p>\n

And emissions from overseas operations \u2013 in the case of the US, 70 percent of its military activity \u2013 are excluded from the balance sheet entirely<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Conflicts and wars<\/h3>\n

Most of Europe has refused to come clean, too. France, with the continent\u2019s most active military, reports none of its emissions.<\/p>\n

According to research by Scientists for Global Responsibility, the UK\u2019s military emissions were three times larger than those it reported \u2013 even after supply chains, as well as weapons and equipment production, were excluded. The military was responsible for the overwhelming majority<\/a> of British government emissions.<\/p>\n

And new technology, rather than turning the military green, is often making things much worse.<\/p>\n

The latest fighter jet developed by the US, the F-35, is reported to burn 5,600 litres of fuel an hour<\/a>. It would take 1,900 cars to guzzle a similar amount of fuel over the same period.<\/p>\n

Norway, like many other countries, has been queuing up to get its hands on this new-generation jet. According to the Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen, the total emissions by the Norwegian military over the next decade will rise by 30 percent as a result of its F-35 purchases alone.<\/p>\n

As well as discounting the environmental harm caused by military equipment procurement and supply chains, countries are also excluding the significant impacts of conflicts and wars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Each year of the US occupation of Iraq that began in 2003, for example, is conservatively estimated to have generated emissions equivalent to putting an additional 25m cars on the road<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Military spending up<\/h3>\n

Unlike the farming and logging industries, or the manufacturing industries, or the fossil fuel industries, efforts to curb the growth in military spending \u2013 let alone reverse it \u2013 are off the table at the COP26 summit.<\/p>\n

And for that, Washington has to take the major share of the blame.<\/p>\n

Its \u201cdefence\u201d budget already comprises about 40 percent of the $2tn<\/a> spent annually on militaries worldwide. China and Russia \u2013 ostensibly the two bogeymen of the COP26 summit \u2013 lag far behind.<\/p>\n

The government of Boris Johnson unveiled last year<\/a> what it called \u201cthe biggest programme of investment in British defence since the end of the Cold War\u201d.\u00a0Britain is no outlier. After a short-lived \u201cpeace dividend\u201d caused by the break-up of the Soviet Union, global military expenditure has been on an almost continuous upward trend<\/a> since 1998, led by the US.<\/p>\n

Paradoxically, the upturn began about the time western politicians began paying lip service\u00a0to tackling \u201cclimate change\u201d at the Kyoto summit.<\/p>\n

\n

US military spending has been rising steadily since 2018. It is set to continue doing so for at least another two decades<\/a> \u2013 way past the deadline set by climate scientists for turning things around.<\/p>\n

The same global upward trend has been fed by a surge in military expenditure by Middle Eastern countries \u2013 notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE \u2013 since 2013. That appears to reflect two trends rooted in Washington\u2019s changing approach to the region.<\/p>\n

First, as it has withdrawn its overstretched occupation forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has increasingly outsourced its military role to wealthy client states in this oil-rich region.<\/p>\n

And second, as Israel and the Gulf states have been encouraged to forge closer military and intelligence ties against Iran, these same Gulf states have been allowed to play military catch-up<\/a> with Israel. Its famed \u201cqualitative military edge\u201d is being gradually eroded.<\/p>\n

Propping up this Middle East arms spree is the UK<\/a>, which has been exporting to the Saudis, and the US, which heavily subsidises<\/a> Israel\u2019s military industries.<\/p>\n

Power competition<\/h3>\n

All this means that, while western politicians promise to cut emissions at COP26, they are actually busy preparing to increase those emissions out of view. Ultimately, the problem is that little can be done to green our militaries, either substantively or through a greenwashing makeover. The military\u2019s rationale is neither to be sustainable nor to be kind to the planet.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. He is the author of: <\/em>Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006); <\/em>Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008); and <\/em>Disappearing Palestine: Israel\u2019s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011 he was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize<\/a> for Journalism.<\/em> The same year, Project Censored<\/a> voted one of Jonathan\u2019s reports, \u201cIsrael brings Gaza entry restrictions to West Bank\u201d, the ninth most important story censored in 2009-10.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jonathan-cook.net<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 Nov 2021 – The US, Israel and the UK are the triumvirate of villains of the climate talks. Their armed forces are the most polluting on the planet – and the goal at COP26 is to keep that fact a closely guarded secret.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":199146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[229,686,2604,2716,401,2721,993,685,88,291,2462,639,124,70],"class_list":["post-199145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","tag-activism","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-cop26","tag-environment","tag-glasgow","tag-global-warming","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-israel","tag-military","tag-military-industrial-media-complex","tag-uk","tag-united-nations","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}