Earlier this month, a European Climate Foundation study was released about the climate impact of the war in Ukraine: Climate Damage Caused by Russia’s War in Ukraine, lead author Leonard de Klerk.

The report assesses the full impact of the war over a 12-month period, including direct emissions from military activities, the impact of fires, the sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the emissions associated with re-building towns and infrastructure demolished in the fighting … even the impact of the extra emissions from international flights forced to take detours in order to avoid Russian airspace.

The headline figure is an impact of 120 MtCO2e, broadly equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of Belgium. The rough breakdown of this is 20% from military activities (burning fuel in land vehicles and planes, making and firing ammunition, building concrete fortifications), 15% from fires, 12% from the pipeline sabotage, 40% associated with the rebuilding requirements, and 10% from diverted aviation.

One thing that is absent from the headline figure is the change in land use – the clearing of tree cover – and the consequent reduction in carbon sequestration.

The report is intended to shock – to highlight that apart from the human cost in the region, there is a global environmental cost. And that wars generally, and military activities generally, go unreported in terms of their climate impact. It is estimated that military emissions – left out of the Paris Agreement – account for around 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

While the Ukraine war is very shocking, less publicised military impacts are perhaps even more so. According to the Costs of War project at Brown University, the US military’s activities between 2001 and 2018, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, amount to 440 MtCO2e, nearly 4 times the emissions from the first year of war in Ukraine.

Sticking with Ukraine, the ECF report shows how the direct emissions from military activities are actually surprisingly small, as a proportion of the total impact. About twice as significant are the emissions from the (eventual) rebuilding. The impact from fires is broadly comparable with the figure from military activities. And – perhaps most startling of all – the extra international flight miles account for about half as much.

And this leads to the following train of thought – what we do in peacetime still, in 2023, vastly outweighs the effect of war. The international community – had there been the coordination and will – could have decided to limit the number of flights in order to compensate for their increased length in having to avoid flying over Russia. The result would have been avoided emissions equal to 50% of the impact from the war’s military operations. In Britain, if we all – including companies and government on our behalf – reduced our carbon footprint by about 16%, we would fully compensate for the entire footprint of the war in Ukraine, based on de Klerk’s analysis. In the US, the comparable figure is about 2%.

And while it is right to condemn war in Ukraine, it is also right to see things clearly in historical context. Viz the impact of American military activities in the last couple of decades. Or – going further back – the impact of Britain’s wars, including the destruction of our forests over centuries to build our navies.