We have finally begun the long-overdue public debate about the pressing realities of climate change.  The challenges have been once again highlighted in graphic terms in the recently published International Panel on Climate Change report. 

Much of the debate has focused on the role of individuals as general ‘over-consumers’, as energy, car and plane users or meat eaters etc. There is little doubt that the actions of individuals (alone and collectively) are central to environmental degradation and to the challenges we now face.

There has been less focus on corporate responsibility and its role in generating the crisis as well as in its resolution. Even less so have we focused on the role and impact of militarisation and the military in deepening the crisis. 

At the forefront of creating climate change are the powerful fossil fuel, agribusiness, cement, concrete and mining industries plus those financial institutions that back them. 

Their role becomes clear once we recognise the fact that just under 100 companies are responsible for 71 per cent of global emissions. The top 20 companies alone produce nearly 30 per cent of all emissions.

Despite this, these companies continue to routinely receive state handouts and investments from many of the largest private banks.  Ignoring all scientific evidence as to their negative consequences they continue to promote new coal, oil and gas projects while simultaneously engaging in greenwash. 

These companies have produced nearly two-thirds of all greenhouse gas emissions generated since the beginning of industrialisation, much of it in recent decades. 

Many of them are familiar to us - Chevron, Exxon and BP.  Less familiar are those government-run industries, producing coal in countries such as China, the former Soviet Union, North Korea and Poland. 

Smoke rises from a petrochemical plant in Rotterdam. Photo: Shutterstock

Many are sitting on substantial reserves of fossil fuels which they currently intend to exploit.  If these reserves are not left in the ground and are burned instead, it will generate an even greater risk of imminent climate change. 

Focusing on the behaviour and plans of such companies allows us to hold them to account not as faceless corporations but as chief executives, shareholders and government ministers.  Unless we directly confront their behaviour and strategies our commitments to addressing climate change amount to little more than just vacuous verbiage.

Military influence on climate change

A second key front in the struggle against climate change must be militarisation and the military.  For example, if the US military were a country, its fuel use alone would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.  Today the US military alone is a bigger polluter than some 140 countries combined.

Its consumption of fuel per soldier per day increased from 3.8 litres of oil in the period 1939-1945 to 34 litres in the Vietnam War, 38 litres during the 1991 Gulf War, and 57 litres during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  By 2006, the US Air Force consumed more fuel in Iraq and Afghanistan than all the aeroplanes flown by American forces during the entire Second World War  

Worldwide, the military remains the single biggest institutional consumer of hydrocarbons.  They continue to lock us into predominantly hydrocarbon-based weapons systems for years to come.  While the military has invested in developing alternative energy sources like biofuels, these make up only a tiny fraction of spending on fuels.

The US military alone is a bigger polluter than some 140 countries combined.

The bootprint of the military is enormous.  Similar to corporations, militaries rely on extensive global networks of container ships, trucks and cargo planes to supply operations with everything from bombs to equipment and hydrocarbon fuels.  And this does not consider the conduct of war itself and its direct and indirect impact on the environment.

Additionally, militaries relies on secrecy (hiding behind their version of ‘security’) and being excluded from many climate change targets with the result that we are significantly in the dark as to its real impact.

Significantly reducing the world’s war machine must be a key plank of any serious climate change agenda.  ‘Greening’ the current military machine is simply not a credible option.

The challenges of our climate emergency urgently require a new politics not just from governments but more importantly from citizens. If we are to meet any of our real climate goals, we simply must confront the agendas of both global corporations and the world’s military.