A global military buildup poses an existential threat to climate goals, according to researchers who say the rearmament planned by Nato alone could increase greenhouse gas emissions by almost 200m tonnes a year.
With the world embroiled in the highest number of armed conflicts since the second world war, countries have embarked on military spending sprees, collectively totalling a record $2.46tn in 2023.
For every dollar invested in new hardware, there is not only a corresponding carbon cost but also an opportunity cost to potential climate action, critics say. This is on top of the huge death toll resulting from armed conflicts.
Few militaries are transparent about the scale of their fossil fuel use, but researchers have estimated that collectively they are already responsible for 5.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Your assessment is both correct and incorrect depending on your point of view.
From the geopolitical view of Europe and its allies, yes. Militarization is essential to survive the conflict that is to come. It is coming.
From the perspective of humanity’s tenuous grasp on this planet, well, you’ve heard of misallocation of funds - where spending is suboptimal or wasteful. This military buildup would be the next step down the value ladder. Let me introduce you to the concept of malallocation - spending so out of touch with what’s needed, it makes things worse, and actively hurts your interests.
A planet that is in severe ecological overshoot and is having it’s Wile E. Coyote moment where its already run off the cliff and there is a brief moment before gravity takes hold. In this case the gravity pulling the coyote down are the forces of the metacrisis - a conflux of problems and predicaments having exceeded so many planetary boundaries and is suffering the consequences of which climate change is only one.
From this point of view, one could surmise that no species this technologically advanced and this terminally shortsighted was meant to survive. When multiple ecological crises rose out of industrialization to threaten our hold on this planet, our final acts were to double down on more of the same so we would be well positioned to fight over the last resources before we snuff ourselves out of existence.
A good candidate for the great filter.
What good is saving the planet if Russia kills everyone anyway.
What good is saving yourself from Russia if humanity snuffs it anyway?
MAD was supposed to be a threat, not a promise.