Last Ditch

The Guardian’s Damien Gayle has done some excellent reporting on the environmental impacts of the US-Israel war on Iran. In this recent article, the world’s biggest network of climate organisations has condemned the US-Israeli attack on Iran as “an illegal act of aggression” that “meets the criteria for ecocide”. This war, like all wars, all but locks in a hotter, more desperate future for humanity.

“An immediate and permanent ceasefire is the only path forward,” said the Climate Action Network, an umbrella group for more than 1,900 civil society organisations in over 130 countries, in a statement on Thursday, adding that such “unilateral attacks” by “imperialist interests” are a threat to countries across the global south.

The attacks on Iran’s oil storage facilities have unleashed massive health and environmental harm. Burning fuel depots poison air, land, water and lungs that will linger in the atmosphere long after the bombing stops. This meets the criteria for ecocide.

Corporations, financial institutions and the arms industry form part of the same fossil-fuelled war economy that profits from destruction while also accelerating climate breakdown.

Climate justice cannot exist in a world where war and impunity are allowed to expand unchecked.

Meanwhile, here is what the opening days of the war have cost. Iran has retaliated against Gulf States’ energy infrastructure as Donald Trump has also threatened to blow up the massive Iranian oil fields. By every possible legal definition, that would be a war crime. Unfortunately, actors like Russia, the US, Israel, and Iran have now normalized such actions.

Food costs are set to rise dramatically, along with energy prices, and the world has wasted much precious time to reduce carbon emissions by recklessly attacking each other. As ever, the people that pay the real cost are us. Ordinary workers and citizens who are trying to make ends meet get squeezed tighter and tighter as the powerful battle for control over resources.

While we may want to escape to our gardens to avoid thinking about the impacts of imperialism and illegal wars, I think we must always look at how all of these things are tied together, if we’re to have any hope of making the real and lasting change we will need to survive.