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Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

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Emissions War Escalates—Pollution From World’s Militaries in Spotlight at UN Summit

Brian Green, director, technology ethics, quoted by The War Horse.

The War Horse reports, "Despite the growing focus on the military’s carbon footprint, climate security experts and others who dissect the topic expect the battle over emissions disclosure to be an uphill fight for environmentalists and researchers."

“One reason is that the military usually gets a pass on pollution and environmental degradation, especially during wartime,” said Brian Green, an ethicist who studies environmental issues at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California. “The reasoning is that it doesn’t really matter how much fuel you’re burning because if you lose the war, then that’s much, much worse than the environmental damage.

“I’m not saying that the studies of wartime emissions shouldn’t be done. They should,” Green said. “However, if you start talking about the carbon emissions from a bomb that also kills a bunch of people, people are going to say, ‘What’s wrong with you? You seem a little insensitive.’”

 

Brian Green, director, technology ethics, quoted by The War Horse, and re-quoted in "Pollution From World’s Militaries in Spotlight at UN Summit" by Inside Climate News.

 

 

 

Ethics
media, government, environment