Ecologists, activists, lobbyists and of course politicians are already turning their attention to ecological aspects of modern warfare. As a consequence, governments and their armed forces will have to pay more attention to the serious...
moreEcologists, activists, lobbyists and of course politicians are already turning their attention to ecological aspects of modern warfare. As a consequence, governments and their armed forces will have to pay more attention to the serious ecological ramifications of conflict. Air forces face the greatest challenges. During both peace and war they have far greater carbon footprints than armies and navies. They use potentially more devastating ordnance. Their targets traditionally include objects in or near population centers and the aquifers, waterways, soils and food sources that sustain them. And air forces cause far worse damage to environmentally significant production, storage and distribution infrastructure (much of it based on petroleum, oil, lubricants or chemicals). This work does not recommend the blanket exclusion of any potential target sets from planning processes. Rather, it argues that, when we utilize our existing warrior code, the Just War ethical framework, we must now slightly expand our time-honored moral and legal constructs of proportionality and discrimination to include environmental issues. That is, the book argues for the inclusion of ecological protection in military planning and for it to be weighed expertly, along with the likely need for post-war remediation activities, among the factors that will ultimately determine the justifiability of military actions.