War -and no peace

We live in an era of global conflict, several regions on the planet engulfed in battle now. We watch, our senses horrified, then often numbed, as wars melt down the moral architecture humanity once carefully constructed, ripping human rights, ruining children’s lives, shattering homes, hospitals and dignity. We can also see how the economy of aggression works in growing ripples, sharpening prices, scarcities and miseries worldwide.

Dulce et Decorum Est: the lyrics to the iconic war poem

What is less known is war’s environmental impacts. From ancient times, ‘scorched earth’ was a military tactic. The Peloponnesian War of 431 BCE saw Sparta’s army destroy Athens’ farms and forests, aiming to starve it into defeat. Later wars saw greater horrors wreaked upon Earth. With colonisation, European armies feverishly sought timber for militaries, destroying massive forests across South America and Asia. By the First World War, a military industrial complex had emerged, exponentially boosting the ability to destroy. Huge amounts of deadly weapons were made and deployed, bombs, shells and singed craters dotting once-fertile fields and tranquil woods. In World War II, atomic weapons truly flagged off the era of war with no peace for their poisoning effects on human beings, land, water and air remained evident decades later.



Terrifying chemicals were used in the Vietnam conflict, leeching into fields and forests, while the Iraq War, fought over oil, was also fought with oil, deliberately released into marine and marsh ecosystems, choking life. Today, with the Ukraine crisis, military strikes deepen pollution while nuclear catastrophe lingers in the shredded shadows of peace.



All this comes at a planetary price. Scientists estimate US military operations since 2001 amount to 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases — equal to the annual emissions of 257 million passenger cars. The US Defense Department is the world’s single largest consumer of oil — and among the biggest greenhouse gas emitters. Military bases, tanks and transport don’t just mirror heated minds. They also reflect a heating planet. Ironically, such global warming is now feared to cause more instability and wars.

However, as Times Evoke’s global experts emphasise, there are solutions — foremost is weaning militaries worldwide off the fossil fuel dependence that drives conflict. Another is public awareness of the ecological costs of battles while a third is greater empathy for war’s ravages on non-human beings. Join Times Evoke in learning to avert war — which will have no peace.