Print

Print


Dear all,

Myself and Jonathan Essex from BioRegional were discussing the idea of looking into estimating the carbon footprint of war, and in particular the Iraq war. This would include sorties, military transport, armaments, reconstruction and other miscellaneous items such as oil fires. We're thinking of testing the water with a number of proxy measurements then scaling up the project as we get some idea of upper and lower bounds for the estimates and the availability of information.

With the Copenhagen discussions looming on the horizon, does anyone know how war factors into GHG frameworks and their related negotiations? I'm concerned that although military estates are including in carbon accounting (at least in the UK), what happens with war and reconstruction is not and that it may prove to be a sizeable figure, at least important enough to warrant consideration of within any GHG framework targets.

If anyone has any particular knowledge that they can contribute or would like to assist in this project (as ever with these things, it's a voluntary spare-time effort, unless it picks up funding later on), please contact me.

Some of the initial proxy measures were average figures of CO2/GHG per £ of military spend scaled up to the cost of Iraq war; cost of reconstruction contracts for buildings, again CO2 per £/$ of building spend; typical flight mpgs and fuels, multiplied by an indicative flight distance and number of flights; oil used by occupying forces...and so on.

Regards

Jonathan

Tel:01728 621047