War-related carbon emissions deserves attention

Edited and translated by People's Daily Online

The international community has not paid enough attention to war-related carbon emissions, a major contributor to global warming. If such emissions continue to go unnoticed, there will be a "war over carbon emissions" sooner or later.

War-related carbon emissions can be divided into three categories. The first category are carbon emissions produced during the research and development, production, storage, transportation, and utilization of weapons, equipment, ammunition, and supplies used in the war that a country or group of countries waged against a sovereign state, as well as during long large-scale civil wars.

The second category includes the destruction of urban and rural buildings, infrastructure, industrial and mining establishments, oil and gas facilities, forests, and grassland caused by wars, as well as carbon emissions produced during rescue operations and post-war reconstruction.

The third includes carbon emissions produced throughout the production and exports of weapons, equipment, and ammunition to one of the warring parties in a country or region. The international community should revise the international law based on scientific research to curb war-related carbon emissions because the existing energy conservation and emissions reduction measures are not enough to resolve global warming.

Although estimates on this type of emissions need to be done by scientists, common sense says the fact that cities are devastated by a number of missiles and warplanes and then reconstructed after the war will inevitably lead to the most serious carbon emissions.

Calculated according to output power, a U.S. M1 main battle tank's carbon emissions are equivalent to those of 10 ordinary Mercedes-Benz cars. Therefore, war-related carbon emissions' impact on climate change are much greater than those caused by industry, thus belligerent countries' overall carbon emissions more should be counted in.