[ad_1]
If the U.S. military were a nation state, it would be the 47th largest emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases, found in a 2019 study.
Although the British universities of Lancaster and Durham only considered emissions from fuel use in their study, it pointed to the huge impact that armed forces around the world have on the world’s climate.
Facing the battle against global warming, for the first time NATO has been made the center of the focus of planning and strategy.
Western military alliance leaders are set on Monday to agree on a climate action plan to neutralize their armed forces by 2050, and to adapt to the threats of global warming.
NATO diplomats said efforts to focus on climate change were described during Donald Trump’s presidency in the United States. He called climate change “fraud” and pulled the United States out of the international Paris Agreement to fight climate change.
Trump also expressed distrust of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and in 2018 threatened to withdraw the United States from the alliance formed in 1949 to contain the Soviet military threat.
Now, with U.S. President Joe Biden prioritizing climate action, diplomats said NATO has been able to act on concerns that climate change is a threat both to transatlantic security and to personnel. of the alliance.
“This is a defining challenge of our time, and we must be an organization leading it,” a senior NATO European diplomat told Reuters.
POLLUTER
NATO member state militaries have long been aware that climate change will have major security implications, expected to include increased migration, flooding of NATO coastal bases and a larger Russian presence in Arctic as sea ice melts.
But, to reduce their own climate -warming emissions from the use of fossil fuel, member states need reform at the heart of the alliance because NATO sets fuel standards throughout the organization.
By promising to eliminate net CO2 emissions by 2050, NATO’s action plan will align the organization on the path to delivering the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7F).
Meeting that goal means reducing military emissions that are often excluded from carbon emission targets in countries – no bad deed for the U.S. Department of Defense, the single largest consumer of petroleum in worldwide, according to 2019 research by Neta Crawford at Boston University.
While experts say EU countries have reportedly reported emissions from national military, a study commissioned by the European Parliament calculated in February that the carbon footprint of EU military spending in 2019 is about 24.8 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent – very similar to the CO2 emissions released by nearly 14 million cars.
A German defense expert, who declined to be named, said a major battle tank like Germany’s Leopard 2 plays 400 liters (106 gallons) of diesel on the farm to cover just 100 km (62 miles). The average fuel consumption in the United States of a light-duty civilian vehicle will be 9.4 liters per 100 km in 2018, according to a report in International Energy 2020.
Tank warfare also threatens to become more severe under global warming. At a NATO exercise in Poland in 2019, the temperature in German Ozelot tanks rose more than 40 degrees Celsius, and soldiers could spend only a few hours an hour inside, a source said of the military.
Some NATO allies are working to reduce power use or incorporate climate prediction models into military missions. Germany has the first carbon-neutral barracks, which produce almost entirely energy from geothermal power and solar panels. The Dutch military may have used solar panels instead of diesel generators during operation.
‘MULTIPLIER CRISIS’
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described climate change as a “multiplier to the crisis”.
The military also expects more operations in climate -vulnerable regions, as troops have been called in to help tackle climate -driven natural disasters. Such crisis management is one of NATO’s main tasks, due to its ability to provide food supply and rapid logistical and medical support.
In 2018, eight of the 10 countries hosting the largest number of personnel involved in multilateral peace operations will be in areas severely exposed to climate change, according to a study by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Allies are also trying out a lot of equipment to operate in the freezing cold. The durability of assets on the battlefield has always been a priority, European defense sources told Reuters.
Stoltenberg, a former UN special envoy on climate change, began pushing for a NATO climate agreement after Biden replaced Trump, diplomats said. The allies have not yet decided how much climate -related investment to jointly fund with NATO.
“The security policy community clearly sees that climate change is a driver of conflict,” said Jamie Shea, a former senior NATO official now in the Friends of Europe think tank in Brussels.
Because military assets take decades to form and have a longer life than civilian vehicles, one of NATO’s biggest contributions in the medium term, experts say, will be increased use of synthetics. fuels rather than fossil fuels.
Made from water, CO2 and renewable energy, synthetic fuels do not produce sulfur or nitrogen pollution and still have a high energy density. NATO’s standard fuel in planes or aircraft is petroleum, one of the more polluting fuels.
The German military, the Bundeswehr, could start adding synthetic fuel to traditional fuel within years.
Electric tanks, however, are not an option.
“It will prove difficult to install charging stations on the battlefield in the time before the fighting starts,” said a German defense source who declined to be named.
Our Standards: The Principles of Trust at Thomson Reuters.
[ad_2]
picture credit