NJPN Blog - Bruce Kent on Elephants

Bruce Kent - image ICN

I think we all know what the saying about the invisible 'Elephant in the Room' means: something important has been ignored.

The missing elephant, in our political, economic and campaigning world, is the money spent on military use and production. Competition for resources is fierce, yet the world now spends almost two trillion, (not billion) dollars annually on its military - not on global health, or food production, or education. Isn't that quite shocking?

Sadly military expenditure goes up not down. It is now 9.3% higher than it was in 2011 and 2.6% higher now than in 2019.

Much of this military expenditure, and the activity it involves, means greater quantities of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and higher global temperatures. War itself contributes to climate change through the entire cycle - ore extraction, manufacture of weaponry, massive amounts of fuel needed for trials and training, the use of fuel and explosives in military operations of all kinds, and extensive rebuilding of devastated infrastructure following conflict. I could go on.

This elephant gets much less notice than it should. Little mention of it, I find, in the minutes of various organisations working to tackle the climate crisis. This may have something to do with the political restrictions of legal charitable status. Lord Deben, who is chair of the national Climate Change Committee, which has much that is positive to say about reversing the climate crisis, avoids any link with militarism. (A former Secretary of State for the Environment, Lord Deben also advises the Catholic Church on these issues.)

At present there is no obligation on nations to count military emissions (estimated by Scientists for Global Responsibility to be about 6% of global greenhouse gases) nor to include them in reduction targets. In 2021, NATO agreed to 'significantly reduce' military greenhouse gas emissions . That did not prevent Britain sending an aircraft carrier all the way to Japan to impress China and 'improve' our international global standing. Nor did it prevent the British decision earlier this year to greatly increase the number of British nuclear warheads.

It is high time that the military Elephant was made visible and asked to sit down and join in the discussion about our global future. The opportunity to do just that is close at hand as we prepare for the COP26 UN Climate conference in Glasgow in November. Military expenditure, military production and its consequences, military emissions, and the entire assumption that military methods solve our problems, must be part of the Glasgow agenda.

Our global climate insecurity won't and can't be solved with guns and bombs. It's time to be ambitious and go back to the foundation of the United Nations, created 'to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war'.