Global News Podcast - Bonus: War and climate

Episode Date: March 8, 2026

How do conflicts like the US-Israel war with Iran impact our planet?In this special bonus episode of The Climate Question podcast, we answer listeners’ questions about the environmental cost of armed conflict, from Gaza to Ukraine. We examine the carbon footprint of battle itself - the jets, the bombs, the supply lines - and the impact of maintaining armies and bases during peacetime. We also ask our experts if there are any ways for the military to reduce their emissions and whether commanders now see climate change as a strategic threat.You can hear more episodes of The Climate Question every week, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Recently, the team have looked at the climate challenge facing the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, the green energy revolution in China and what whales tells us about the state of our planet.

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This is not the future we were promised. Like, how about that for a tagline for the show? From the BBC, this is the interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work. and your politics, your everyday life. And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet.

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway from the Global News podcast. And as the US-Israeli war with Iran continues, we thought you might like to hear another BBC World Service podcast, The Climate Question. They've had lots of listener questions about the climate impact of military conflict. You can listen to the episode right. here. War leaves a visible trail of destruction. The loss of life, homes destroyed, cities

reduced to rubble. 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 Greya Jackson. A huge thank you to all of you who got in touch with us about this topic, including Kekka from Czech Republic and James on YouTube. A quick note before we start. We'd already planned this show long before the US-Israel 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. 140 people are 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 St Andrews in the UK, Professor of International Relations, Nita Crawford. Hi, Nita. 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 peacetime. So let's just look at the former first with you, Ben. 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' deep, wide, and long tunnels or their tunnel network. 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 forest in a year, or the annual emissions of a medium, small

countries such as Jordan. So 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, ecological sensitivity, the number of countries involved, the type of weapons used, these all play a significant factor in dictating the environmental and climate footprint. Russia's invasion in Ukraine is ongoing, but it was double the time, right? So the Israel-Causal war was only two years. Now we're into the fourth year, right, of the Ukraine war. And it emitted roughly 237 million tons of CO2 equivalent. 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 1,200 kilometers. And if you think about Israel, the distance between Israel and Gaza, you're only thinking about, you know, 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 personal. Yeah, concrete bunkers. fortifications. Also in Ukraine, researchers have found that forest fires of natural landscapes have released

a significant amount, roughly 22 percent 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, right, which then makes concrete. this is really a significant hidden emission 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. And the steel as well, which is another bit of bar, 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 neuter 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 U.S. Israeli war with Iran because that's predominantly been air strikes, right? And these attacks have been launched from U.S. 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 U.S. military as Swegianaris. There is nothing like it in the world. So the United States has between 700 and 800 and international, overseas bases. So as you mentioned, some of the strikes in the war occur from those bases

that are already there in Saudi Arabia. The 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 B-2 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, you know, tremendously long-range capabilities and pre-positioning, but also because it can move these basically floating bases anywhere, anytime. Ben? Yeah, well, you also have to think about something like the F-35 lightning, right, this stealth bomber. Right, I guess I say. It's just an incredibly

carbon-intensive piece of equipment. I think what we're seeing is a real place. pushed 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? Oh, so they don't come back? Well, no. I mean, it used to be during the Iraq War and whatnot. We used the MQ9 Reaper or predator back then, but now it's the Reaper, right? And this was the idea where you would have a 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? And 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 the sort of overall footprint of wars as we move forward. And but Nita, I just wanted to talk briefly about the sort of the climate cost of peacetime, 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 and 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 U.S. military emissions in any one year, a peacetime year. Wow. Okay. And then in operational mode, 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 are 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 peacetime 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 at peacetime, but remember that it's constantly mobilized and circulating its forces. At any one time, seven or so of the aircraft carriers are out, circling. Now, the aircraft carriers themselves are nuclear-powered, but they have generally 10 diesel-powered ships that go along with them to protect the aircraft carriers, which are 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 peacetime the same kinds of fires that you see during wartime.

In wartime, the fires are deliberately set oftentimes, or sometimes their forests are satellite, accidentally. But often they're deliberately set. There are wildfires that come from training, and we've seen this 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.,

Are there 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 its peer competitor, but it's not really a competitor to 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 are 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 Mach 3. 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 Swaygenerous 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 in the 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 a stealth fighter. Right. Okay. 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 U.S. 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 coasts, 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 and, 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 at and calculating the emissions, do we know what the impact of peacetime activities are? Do we have like a percentage of global activities, global emissions? Well, there have 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 annually military emissions are larger than many countries. So we have a sense, yes. Why don't we have more accurate and better data?

Militaries don't report their emissions. 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, the last sign? 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 for 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 heard at least for why militaries don't want to report their missions 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 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. A reminder that you're listening to the climate question from the BBC World Service.

This is not the future we were promised. Like, how about that for it? tagline for the show. From the BBC, this is the interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life. And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet.

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. When you're car shopping on your phone, you need to be. to see all the information. With the Car Gurus app, you can. Powerful search tools let you see deal ratings, price history and dealer reviews on listings all in one place. And you can turn on real-time price drop alerts, so you'll never miss a great deal. It's no wonder CarGurus is the number one rated car shopping app in Canada on the Apple app and Google Play Store. By your next car car gurus today with Car Gurus at Cargoos.ca. Go to Cargooros.ca to make sure you're Big deal is the best deal. That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S.C-A. Car gurus.com. I'm Greer Jackson.

If you've enjoyed the podcast so far, 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 could 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, the 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 in the air.

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 basis. But the real savings would be to change the training and operations of militaries and to reduce their bases. For instance, in regions where the mission is no longer so important. For example, at the end of the U.S. war in 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 U.S. 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 U.S. military doctrine as a whole. Right. To think about in each region, what is actually required to deter. The idea of reducing bases, though, I'm wondering how realistic that is given the rising global tensions that we're seeing. Right. 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 their adversaries 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,

militaries are already decarbonizing in a way. They are 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. So 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 militaries see climate change as a problem, in particular with extreme weather, right? It's hard to land in F-35 on a melted tarmac. or move humvies around when the base is flood. And so extreme weather is something that militaries are really concerned with. How are they going to operate in a future landscape that is clearly climatically change, altered? It's also 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 as easily. Yeah. 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 militaries more, right, Neuter? Yes. It used to be the case that militaries 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 fend for themselves. The other thing that people have been concerned about is whether there'd 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 wrought by increased carbon

dioxide in the atmosphere and rising sea levels and so on. So I think the, again, could be be addressed by greater militarization, or we could look to the roots of these problems and solve them another way. Militaries think of climate change as a 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 by helping countries respond to the hotter, wetter, or drier conditions that they face. And that 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 a sort of belt and suspenders approach is inefficient. I'm afraid that is where we have to leave it today. Oh, did you have just getting into it? I know. I'm sorry. Professor Nita Crawford, Dr. Benjamin Thank you so much for joining me today on the climate question. Thank you, Greg. I really appreciate. 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, Philip Bull and Tom Brignall. I'm Greg Jackson. I'll see you next time. Hi, Oliver Conway 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.