Gaza war emissions has ‘huge climate cost’
‘Toxic pollutants… will remain long after the fighting is over.’ Benjamin Neimark, the co-author of study into greenhouse gas emissions from the war in Gaza.
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM)’s peace and disarmament team has highlighted a study showing that the first months of the conflict in Gaza produced more planet-warming gases than twenty climate-vulnerable nations do in a year. ‘One of the lesser talked about calamities of the terrible war in Gaza and one that affects the entire planet,’ they tweeted on 10 January.
According to the analysis by researchers in the UK and US, the climate cost of the first sixty days of Israel’s military response was equivalent to burning at least 150,000 tonnes of coal. The study, first reported by The Guardian, says that over ninety-nine per cent of the 281,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2 equivalent) estimated to have been generated in the first sixty days, following the 7 October Hamas attack, can be attributed to Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza. This includes CO2 from aircraft missions, tanks and fuel, and making and exploding bombs, artillery and rockets. The analysis shows that Hamas rockets, fired into Israel during the same period, generated about 713 tonnes of CO2 – equivalent to approximately 300 tonnes of coal.
Benjamin Neimark, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, and co-author of the research, said it is ‘only a snapshot of the larger military boot print of war… a partial picture of the massive carbon emissions and wider toxic pollutants that will remain long after the fighting is over’.
The study was published this month on Social Science Research Network.
