Description
That war has adverse effects on the natural environment has been well documented since at least the Vietnam war, when the Americans used herbicides to deprive guerrilla fighters of their hiding places in the deep foliage of the jungle. Likewise, the military has repeatedly been criticized for the environmental impact of military readiness, including on global carbon emissions. Still, active kinetic wars continue to be fought. At the time of writing most prominently Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza. Unlike with past wars, however, the carbon emissions of these wars are being charted. Moreover, these figures intermittently feature in the mainstream media.
This suggests that there is an appetite for taking seriously the carbon effect of war. Taken together with the fact that natural carbon sinks are finite, the situation raises some crucial questions regarding whether carbon intense wars are ethical, in a sense of morally justifiable? In line with this, this paper is concerned with the following research question: What does climate change do to the justice of war? In answering this question, we commence from the ‘just war theory’, the authoritative statement on the ethics of war. We examine: How would/does climate change, or taking climate change seriously, affect the three categories of just war (jus ad bellum, jus in bello and jus post bellum)? Our aim is to examine and chart the ways in which climate change is likely to affect these three categories of war, or else specific principles within the just war theory , with a view to determining whether in the age of the climate emergency, carbon intense war remains ethically viable.
