‘War and climate change’

To the Editor:

As of this writing there are multiple wars in the world. Along with human tragedy and physical destruction we also experience the degradation of our natural environment. Cities, industries, and infrastructure are destroyed. There is an extraordinary amount of economic wastefulness. There is so much near-term bad news that it’s easy to ignore the long-term effects on our climate. Land, air and sea become polluted. War planes, tanks, trucks, rockets, and warships add their carbon emissions into an already stressed atmosphere. Bombed refineries and oil storage depots send plumes of wasted energy and atmospheric contamination up into our skies.

A worrisome long-term effect comes from needing energy to rebuild. We will need to rebuild cities and infrastructure that wars have destroyed. When the energy required to rebuild comes from using more carbon fuels, the effect is to worsen the warming of the atmosphere. This is because excess carbon gases in the atmosphere hold excessive heat in. This accelerates unpredictable extreme weather events that are driven by climate change. The whole World shares this same atmosphere. Thus, war anywhere effects people everywhere. War is devastating for the people of the Earth in so many ways. Even more than that, war is devastating for Earth itself. 

George Bussey 

White River