What’s the environmental cost of war?

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For the past few years now we’ve all been agonising over the climate crisis and the cost of our actions in terms of environmental harms. Is it better to build using steel and concrete, one of the world’s biggest sources of carbon dioxide, or wood with all the problems of sustainable production? Is it better to scrap an old, polluting fossil-fuel car and replace it with a new electric vehicle, or to keep the old one and avoid the need for more mining of materials to make a new car, even if running it is more damaging? But now, all that worrying and hand-wringing seems like a waste of time. President Putin decided to launch an invasion of Ukraine, and as a result there hasn’t just been one car to be replaced or one building to be restored, but thousands of apartment buildings, schools and hospitals destroyed which eventually will have to be cleared away somehow and replaced, thousands of trees blasted to smithereens which will take decades to be replaced, hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles all destined to be scrapped. Not to mention the carbon dioxide released by every explosion. As well as all the lives lost on both sides, and the huge financial losses, what is the environmental cost of this unprovoked war? All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2022.