PEACE QUEST CAPE BRETON JOINS GLOBAL CALL FOR DEEP CUTS IN MILITARY GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS

NOVEMBER 5, 2021

Peace Quest Cape Breton has added its name to a global ‘Call for Action,’ issued by The Conflict and Environment Observatory, for governments at the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow to “commit to meaningful military emissions cuts.” Noting that “the 2015 Paris Agreement left cutting military greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the discretion of individual nations,” and that the response has been woefully inadequate, the Call to Action argues that “governments must demonstrate their commitments to the Paris targets by setting military GHG reduction targets at COP26.”

Peace Quest Cape Breton Campaign Coordinator Sean Howard stated: “We are honoured to be associated with this eloquent and urgent appeal to cut help greenhouse gas emissions by reducing military carbon pollution. The Paris Agreement aims to limit the rise in global warming to no more than 1.5° of preindustrial levels, a goal almost certainly unattainable without deep cuts in military spending – a process also allowing for the diversion of significant funds to help poorer nations deal with a climate crisis not of their making.”

Peace Quest member Lee-Anne Broadhead added: “War has always been environmentally devastating, but given their monstrous carbon footprint, militaries don’t even need to fight to contribute to the destruction of the planet, and loss of habitat and biodiversity, through global warming. And behind this threat, lurks another, the combination of genocide and ecocide – climate change on an unprecedented scale, at an unprecedented rate – that any nuclear war would bring. For humanity, and life on Earth, to survive we need to decarbonize, demilitarize, and denuclearize. Quickly.”

Although the US military has by far the most obscene carbon footprint – the Pentagon currently emits more GHGs than Portugal, and produces more total pollution per annum than over 100 countries combined – all modern military-industrial states have a role to play in responding to the Call to Action. In Canada, National Defence, the RCMP, and the Coast Guard produce nearly half – 45% - of the government’s emissions. And incredibly, as an August 2021 report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) details, all three are “exempt from key commitments in the Greening Government Strategy.”

Note​

The full Call to Action, and list of 214 signatories, can be viewed on the website of the Climate and Environment Observatory: https://ceobs.org/governments-must-commit-to-military-emissions-cuts-at-cop26/.