The Climate Damage of the War

Ya’ara Peretz

The apocalyptic images of black rain in Tehran won’t leave my mind.

After Israel bombed the oil refineries in Tehran, enormous quantities of pollutants, toxic gases, and chemicals were released and enveloped the city. Through the rain, all of these substances returned to the ground and seeped into the soil and water sources. As of now, there is a real concern about severe health damage affecting all life in Tehran – both in the immediate term and for generations to come.

In the meantime, Iran has already responded with its own attack on an oil refinery in Bahrain and on the world’s largest facility for liquefying fossil gas in Qatar. Israel, for its part, has attacked a gas facility in Bushehr in Iran, and Iran in turn has attacked the Bazan oil refineries in Haifa.

Who is even talking about the climate destruction these attacks are inflicting, in the midst of climate and ecological collapse?

Some will say that the environmental cost is negligible in light of the thousands of people who are being slaughtered and losing their lives, the vast destruction and devastation, and the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Beirut, Iran, Gaza, and within Israel. And indeed, when indifference to human life is breaking records, how can we expect people to think about environmental and climate costs?

We have become accustomed to separating issues of “human life” from environmental issues, to thinking that dealing with climate damage is “a privilege” – but the climate crisis forces us to connect the two. This is especially true given that Israel, Iran, and the United States are, among other things, focusing on bombing fossil fuel facilities (oil and gas).

The disregard of decisionmakers and the silence of the media in the face of the environmental cost of wars – they are the result of ongoing abandonment in the name of short-term interests of power accumulation and greed. This is framed as an “existential war,” but the real existential cost that this war exacts is being concealed. Planes, missiles, and drones do not only affect the ability of human beings to live – they exact a toll on the entire ecological system, which is already in collapse.

If we look to nature, what enables security and prosperous life for all is the pursuit of harmony, interdependence and reciprocity, balance, and fair distribution. A society that scorns these principles and believes in the superiority of one nation over another, one gender over another, is destined to disappear.

Israeli society has grown accustomed to living by the sword – but can a society that sanctifies war also be a society that sanctifies the earth? Wars are an extreme point, but even in routine times, militaries are responsible for approximately 5.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions each year. Military activity (routine operations, training, transport, periods of combat, and so on) creates enormous environmental damage to local communities of humans and animals, destroys natural habitats, and harms biodiversity. As a country responsible for so much military activity in the Middle East, especially in recent years, can we still be called “a nation that desires life”?

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Ya’ara Peretz is a veteran climate activist and a graduate of the Change Agents Course in Climate and Environmental Justice.

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