July 10, 2025 • 37 mins
The world’s militaries are incredibly polluting, collectively accounting for some 5.5% of global emissions. Western economies are now gearing up for a big expansion of their militaries, with members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) agreeing to increase defense spending to 5% of their gross domestic product by 2035. That will commit trillions of dollars more to an enormously carbon intensive industry, unless militaries can find a way to reduce their emissions. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi asks retired Lieutenant General Richard Nugee, author of the UK Ministry of Defence’s climate change report: Can warfare go green?
Explore further:
- Defense Budgets Need to Fight War and Climate Change, Experts Say
- Richard Nugee’s Climate Report
- Estimating the Military’s Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to: Jessica Beck, Eleanor Harrison-Dengate, Sommer Saadi, Mohsis Andam and Siobhan Wagner. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to zero. I am Akshadarati. This week, can warfare
go green? It's been a tense few months. Just a
couple of weeks ago, it felt like the world was
(00:23):
on the brink of another world war when the US
bombed Iranian nuclear sites. And while World War three may
have been averted for now, there are more than one
hundred armed conflicts still going These wars don't just kill people,
but they are also responsible for a huge amount of
carbon emissions. By some estimates, the US military is the
(00:44):
world's largest consumer of oil. As one US general said
in twenty eleven, energy is the lifeblood of our war
fighting capabilities. Western economies are now gearing up for a
big expansion of military spending. The thirty two member countries
that form NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty organization, have agreed
(01:04):
to increase defense spending to a staggering five percent of
their GDP by twenty thirty five. That will be trillions
of dollars more going to an enormously carbon intensive industry.
But few people want to talk about carbon emissions and wars.
It's one reason why defense departments have escaped the scrutiny
faced by businesses or even other parts of government. If
(01:27):
all that money goes to buying casoline hungary equipment that
keeps militaries around the world hooked to fossil fuels, it
will make fighting climate change even harder. And the trouble
is climate change is a threat multiplier. The hotter the planet,
the higher the risks of conflicts, and the deadlier those wars.
Somehow this circle needs to be squared. While countries feel
(01:50):
they must spend more on militaries, doing so in a
way that will increase emissions is also not in the
interest of national security.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
You know, I always get criticized by people who call
we woke for thinking climate and military that I'm thinking
about electric tanks. I'm not, but there is an absolute
truth in the view that electric drives on a vehicle
makes that vehicle better.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
My guest today is Richard Nuji, who was left and
in General in the British Army equan into a three
star general. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in
twenty twenty one, before he retired from the military, he
published a report on what the UK's military must do
in the face of climate change. The report considered both
how the British military is affected by climate change and
(02:34):
what it must do to cut its emissions. I wanted
to find out from Richard whether militaries are taking the
risks of climate change seriously, can warfare go green? And
does the increase in native spending come at the expense
of global climate goals. Welcome to the show, Richard.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
So when you were on tour in Afghanistan or in Iraq,
did you ever think about how climate impacts might affect
the work you were doing on the ground.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
So I suppose the really interesting moment for me was
in Iraq in two thousand and three. I sort of commanded,
loose word everything south of Basra, but at the size
of whales, with one thousand soldiers in my battle group.
And we were there therefore in the summer of two
thousand and three, after the war had finished, and it
got up to about fifty degrees and what was very evident,
(03:28):
and most of the time the heat was very very
dry heat. So the wind came from the north and
so down through the desert, and so it was dried
out by the time it got to us in the
scith of Iraq. But for two weeks of the year
there was a thing which the Iraqis and I can't
remember the word in their language, but it translated as
the cooker where the wind backed and came up the gulf,
and there you therefore had one hundred percent of humidity
(03:50):
and fifty degrees a heat that's actually physically impossible for
humans to live in. And so we were really really
struggling to be able to operate in an environment where
it was so hot that you took a shower, you
dried off, you were immediately soaked again. You woke up soaked,
You moved two meters, you were soaked because you were
sweating so much. I had one soldier who drank sixteen
(04:12):
liters of water and was still dehydrated. We had, out
of the thousand odd soldiers over time, we used two
hundred and fifty about drips to keep people with enough
moisture in their bodies, and we had to send five
people home for heat stroke. Now, wars in the Middle
(04:32):
Ages always the biggest killer was not the war itself,
but was disease, and was dysentery and things like that.
I lost no soldiers on that tour, very sadly. One
died from a heart attack, but I lost no soldiers
through enemy action. But I lost five back to the
UK because of heat, and I put in hospitals, if
(04:54):
so to speak, for a short time two hundred and fifty.
So the heat had a very There was no wh conditioning.
We were living in what was their buildings. We got tents,
but they weren't air conditioned. That all came much later
for the troops, much later. So there's a piece there
about soldiers always find it difficult to operate in intense heat.
(05:16):
That is really intense heat, And so that came to
me that actually, as the world is getting warmer, and
I don't think anybody can deny the world's getting warmer,
it is going to make it more difficult for soldiers
to operate. And then there's all sorts of equipment issues
as well.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
We should come to talking about, now, how does national security, defense,
the military think about climate change in both operating conditions
and in trying to tackle the problem, because the military
does contribute to the problem in big ways. But before
we go there, the report that you ended up writing
in twenty twenty one, as a result of starting to
(05:52):
think about climate change and the impact on military and
what it could do, you had in your introduction, these
words and to read them because they're in a way prophetic,
and we are living through it now. You said, the
threats of our modern world, made worse by rising seas,
extreme weather, and creeping desertification, will almost certainly lead to
(06:14):
more conflict, and more conflict in itself will damage the planet.
Those in conflict will not be able to focus on
the climate, and instead we'll be creating more emissions whilst
in conflict. We are seeing many more conflicts now relative
to twenty twenty one when he wrote the report the
war between Russia and Ukraine. What's happening in Gaza, America's
(06:36):
attack on Iran. We can't say climate change caused them.
A lot of the conflicts that have happened around the
world may have climate as a contributing factor in some places.
Syria is probably the best studied, but it is true
right now, with all that's happening, the military's focus is
very much on fighting and not on climate. So at
(06:59):
such a time, given the work you've done, how do
you get the leadership to think about climate change at all.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
It's a very good question, because it is that perennial
question of the urgent over the important and the urgent,
as we used to say in the military, the crocodile
closest to the canoe is going to be the threat
of war in Europe, the threat of war with Russia.
You know, Europe's part of ETO. But you've also got
wars around you know, you've got more wars around the world,
(07:28):
and that for a military person, you have to focus
on the enemy in front of you. And the enemy
in front of you is a physical presence if you like,
it's a Russian army or Russian Air Force or Russian
navy or whatever. So how do you say, well, hang
on a minute, there's something which is contributing to might
be causing those wars in the first place. And the
answer comes from I think two things. One is for
(07:53):
militaries as much as for politicians, understanding the causes of
war is an important step to understanding how to create
a lasting piece. No war ends, or very very few
wars end without some sort of political settlement. So understanding
the causes of those wars is really really important. And
(08:14):
if climate change is part of that, then you need
to understand that. As a soldier, you need to understand
those causes. It won't answer the question immediately in front
of you, but you do begin to understand the causes.
That's the first piece, and the second piece is about
how can militaries bluntly take advantage of the technologies that
are trying to solve the climate change issues to make
(08:36):
themselves a better, more effective military. So there's a win
win here. One is understanding the causes of war and
the other is embracing the technologies to try and make
your prosecution of that war more effective by looking at
some of the new technologies that are coming onside.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And it's also true that given the importance of national security,
defense departments around the world tend to be the better funded.
Departments tend to be the places where governments have slightly
loser purses because it is seen as a threat that
needs to be managed and it is seen as an
urgent threat. So for a long time there has been
(09:15):
discussion that because the defense departments have more money, and
they are also places where frontier technologies have tended to
be used or deployed or developed as a result, that
those would be the places where we could be pioneering
a lot of green technologies because they could be good
(09:35):
for the military and they will have civilian users. Do
what are success stories that you think exist today in
that basket and how could we build more of them?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So I'll I'll give one example, and how much of
a success story is it that you could debate? But
sustainable aviation fuel. If you look at when I write
the report in twenty twenty one, seventy some percent of
the Row Air Forces emissions were from fuel. And that's
fairly logical. Fast jets use an awful lot of fuel. Interestingly,
fifty five percent of the Navy's emissions were fueled. For
(10:09):
the Army, it's it's down below ten percent. Is their equipment.
Actually most of it is on their land mass. So
if you're trying to tackle the problem of fuel and emissions,
then you need to find an alternative. And the alternative
does exist. It's called sustainable aviation fuel. There's lots of
different types of sustainable aviation fuel there, but there's an
absolute key, if you like, requirement of the Air Force
(10:31):
if they're going to get their emissions down to go
down that route. So what did the Air Force do?
And of course they're not unique in this, but what
they did is they first of all got the whole
of NATO. The Royal Air Force got the whole of
NATO to agree a protocol which said that all equipments
NATO equipments should be capable of taking fifty percent sustainable
aviation fuel. So it's now expanded beyond just a single
(10:54):
military the Royal Air Force in our case, to militaries
across NATO should have the capable ability. It doesn't mean
to say they have to use it, but they should
have the capability to do so. Because there are different
protocols of different fuels with the intent and I don't
know whether that intent will be met or not because
it's in the future. The intent of being able to
ap protocol to say you'd be able to take one
(11:16):
hundred percent sustainable aviation fuel by about twenty forty. That
sends a message to the market. That's the first thing,
which is quite important. It's the message to the market.
The second thing is that the role LEVELCE has been
experimenting with sustained aviation fuel. So we have flown our
first fast jet with saf we've flown our first passenger aircraft,
(11:36):
but they called voyagers, which are also refueling tankers which
are also used for cargo. Using SAF one hundred percent SAF.
So that shows that not only is their intent theoretical intent,
there's practical application and we have shown that we can
do it. Then you look at why would anybody pay
attention to us, And there's two very very good reasons.
(11:57):
One is, if the Air Force, so the Ministry of
Defense says it wants to buy some, you can guarantee
as much as anything can be guaranteed that they will
pay once they've got the fuel. They're not going to
go bust. So there's a guarantee of income for somebody
creating SAF. The second piece is it shows that there
(12:19):
is a government backing to sustainable aviation fuel. So all
those tiny companies that are creating SAF, that are speculating
whether the civil aviation industry or not, will buy it.
As it is more expensive at the moment. In due
course it'll be as cheap, I believe, but that will
take time and it'll take certain circumstances. But the fact
(12:40):
that the government is prepared to invest and say yes,
we want it is something that sends a very significant
message to the market, but more importantly sends a message
to those producers who are relatively small. They're all startups,
so to speak, they might have scaled to a certain extent.
It gives them confidence to go with it.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
It's also happening in the US where the Defense Department
is putting out requests for more advanced battery technologies because
those technologies are being used in warfare today. We've seen
how Ukraine was able to use drones to be able
to destroy a lot of very key and very expensive
infrastructure in Russia. And so people who I've talked to
(13:22):
who've worked in climate tech, who do battery research are
finding Defense Department procurement requests coming in or development requests
coming in for advanced batteries. You do get these impacts
and also places where maybe climate is not the focus,
but the technology itself might be developed and have climate users.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Absolutely, And I think there's a really important piece here
about Julius technology, and it's something that I would say
again and again again because people didn't understand it. Most
people when they think defense, they think weapons, and they
will say that my technology for green transitional green technology
has no purpose in weapons, and they're right, but it
(14:03):
completely misunderstands how ministries of defense work. And in the army,
as an example, thirty percent of the actual army. Of
the British Army, thirty percent is at the tip of
the spear. The other seventy percent is the shaft of
the spear supporting that tip, and of course the shaft
of the spear, if I can use that analogy, is
(14:24):
far more than weapons. In fact, it's not weapons, it's
it's everything else. It's medical, there's logistics, there's batteries, there's vehicles,
there's maintenance, there's so much else, and all of that
can translate relatively simply into the civilian market. And so
this duel use technology which which many people don't see
the value of my technology. It's a green technology. Why
(14:46):
would the Ministry of Defense be interested? The answer is
they're thinking too narrowly about what defense is about. Give
you just one example, very simple example, which is we
traditionally have had diesel driven vehicles in the army andre tanks. Now,
I'm absolutely not suggesting, and you know, I always get
criticized by people who call me woke for thinking climate
(15:06):
and military that I'm thinking about electric tanks. I'm not,
but there is an absolute truth in the view that
electric drives on a vehicle makes that vehicle better. It's
better for all sorts of reasons. It's better for the
obvious reasons that you're silent. You don't have the same
transmission in terms of heat or in terms of exhausts.
(15:30):
None of that can be seen by the enemy because
you're silent and your stable in terms of heat. But
it's also easier to drive. They're better vehicles because the
battery weight is all at the lowest level of the vehicle,
and therefore you've got a much better weight distribution on
the vehicle, which makes them better off road. And on
(15:50):
top of that, you don't have for the soldiers in
that vehicle the vibration and the noise which actually dulls
their senses over time. So it's a much much better vehicle.
Now I'm not advocating one hundred percent electric because that
becomes too susceptible to too many areas of range anxiety
is how civilians call it. But there's all sorts of
things on the battlefield. WI woull make that difficult. But
(16:12):
hybrid vehicles, which are basically electric vehicles with a little
diesel engine to recharge the battery, that is a really
successful opportunity for people in the military to use. Julius
technology coming out of the ev world to come into
the military, and then on top of that, you can
use the batteries for recharging your radios, recharging all those
(16:33):
electronic devices of which each individual soldier has. There is
masses of opportunity for technology that doesn't seem to have
a value in the military actually being presented to the
military and saying, look, we can do this, can you
find a use for it in the military, And nine
times out of ten will say, actually, do you know
what we can find a use for that.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
In a way, it's nice that people don't think about
their technologies having weapons use, because most of the time
we are living in peaceful times and we don't have
to think about weapons. But it is worth remembering that
in the past it is militaries that have decided the
kind of technology that the world runs on. The famous
(17:13):
example of Churchill deciding to move the Navy from burning
coal to burning oil is what ushered in the era
of oil in the twentieth century. Now you're talking about
electrification and about the use of hybrids, there are limits,
especially if we talk about military uses, on how much
(17:35):
electrification could do. So a fast jet is not going
to be running on batteries. Neither is a tank. But
how much further can electrification go into the military space
and where are those opportunities today?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
You're right, and as I say, I'm not arguing for
one hundred cent electric tank, but there's a number of
other areas where it can be used. If we have
have overseas bases, whether they're temporary bases, well let's go
for temporary bases operational bases. One of the issues in
Iraq and Afghanistan was the delivery of oil to patrol
bases and forward bases so that we could run our
(18:15):
vehicles out of them. Whether it was helicopters that were
landing and had to be refueled, and that didn't happen
often at the forward bases, but whether it was the
vehicles that the soldiers used. In order to be able
to patrol, you need fuel to get there. The American
Army Armed Forces lost somewhere between two and three thousand
soldiers killed just getting fuel through. The British lost their
(18:38):
most senior officer killed in Afghanistan getting the fuel through.
So if you can design a power supply that doesn't
rely on diesel in these operational bases so much you
don't need to get so much fuel through and therefore
you're going to lose fewer lives, it's going to cost less.
And also you can use the equipment that is protecting
those fuel convoys out somewhere else. A very good argument
(19:01):
and Rolls Royce and it's supported by the government. Rolls
Royce is looking at micronuclear where you can put on
nuclear power station effectively, and a forty foot container. If
you put that forty foot container into one of our
operational bases, you can bury it, you can make sure
it's secure. Then actually you have almost unlimited fuel and
therefore you do not need diesel to go down the
road to be able to charge your generators or to
(19:23):
charge your vehicles. So that's one side of it. The
other side of it is our permanent bases. You can
look at building resilience through having solar panels, we're looking
at hydro, We're looking at wind on our bases. We
have a lot of bases around the world, permanent bases,
either abroad or in this country in the UK, where
actually we need to produce two things. One we need
(19:45):
to produce electricity for the base, and if you can
do that cheaper through green energy, then why wouldn't you.
But more importantly, it provides that resilience. I would imagine
the Spanish and Portuguese armed forces would be a little
bit embarrassed that they might not have been able to
get out of their camp in that blackout. And yet
the one time you need the armed forces is when
you have something like a blackout or where you have
(20:07):
some sort of trauma that is causing a problem to
the country. If you have your own electricity supply, because
you've gone down the green energy route and the green
transition route, you have the ability to get out of
the barracks and you have the ability to be able
to operate even in the environment where there is a
blackout on the national grid. That's really important. If we're genuinely,
(20:27):
if the military are genuinely the force of last resort,
then they need to be able to operate under any conditions.
And therefore, if you create your own electricity, then you
are more secure and you're more resilient.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
We'll be back with more of my conversation with Richard
Nuji after this break, and Hey, if you're finding this
episode insightful, please take a moment to rate and review
the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback really
matters and helps new listeners discover the show. Thank you.
(21:06):
With all these conflicts, defense departments are increasing spending, especially
in NATO, which just recently met and the members agreed
except Spain, to increase their spending to five percent of
the country's gross domestic product by twenty thirty five. Now,
not all of that needs to go into weapons, but
(21:28):
a lot of it will go into weapons. Is there
a risk that a lot of the green spending which
these same governments whose budgets are tight, who do not
have the capacity to borrow too much, are going to
redirect that green spending into defense instead.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
So, first of all, I would say that the straight
and a half per cent is getting to defense as
a whole rather than just two weapons. And one of
the interesting angles that the Defense Review took published last
month was to absolutely not say what size the armed
forces should be, because what it said is just we
(22:07):
need to grow the armed forces. So it's not just weapons,
it's it's people, it's it's all the support that I
was talking about earlier. So, first of all, three and
a half per cent is not just weapons, and the
one and a half per cent can be used for quote,
national security and resilience. So there's huge scope actually for
national security and resilience to be part of the green
(22:28):
solutions that the country is trying to do as well.
But to the basis of your question is are the
two incompatible with each other? Is one stealing from the other?
I think the answer is absolutely not. A more resilient nation,
a nation that is more self sufficient in energy particularly
is an advantage to our defense. I'll take a very
(22:51):
very simple historical example, and of course it doesn't translate
immediately and totally, but in the Second World War fuel
oil was really limited because we had to bring all
the oil to this country through the Atlantic where things
were being sunk by submarines, U boats and through other vehicles.
(23:13):
You know, everything had to come by sea. So what
did the country do It limited rationed fuel for the
average citizen so that the vast majority of the fuel
could go to the military. And in fact, the only
people really who who were given a ration were transport
companies so that people could use public transport, and farmers
(23:36):
because we had to create food. Translate that into the
twenty first century, our militaries are still using oil whether
it's diesel or whatever, for the ability to fight. So
we're still going to need to import huge amounts of
fuel in much more contested waters in a war where
somemarines are more effective and it's much more you know,
it's much more difficult to defend tankers and so on,
(23:57):
partly because of their size. The country itself cannot rely
to the same level. We can't ration in the same
way that we did in the Second World War because
everything's much more electrified. Act everything's you know, much more
reliant on oil than it used to be, much more reliant.
So what is the alternative? The alternative and interesting I
(24:18):
was reading an article just this morning. The alternative is
to use less oil, and that's not necessarily for a
green reason, but that of course is an advantage to
the whole climate issue. But it's so that if oil
is restricted in more you have already built the alternatives.
(24:38):
To my mind, it is entirely logical to say that
the defense and the war effort, if you had to
go down that route, is reinforced by having green energy
and going further with the green energy transition, because actually
what you're doing is providing resilience to a country that
becomes less dependent on oil and more dependent on self
(24:59):
create energy, which means that the limited oil that might
come across the seas to US can be used for
the military. To make sure that you don't limit the military,
because the military are going to need every drop of
oil in order to be able to fight effectively, and
that's what you want your militaries to do. So I
see the two as completely compatible and completely in unison,
(25:20):
and it would be a tragic mistake if, through politics
and through politicization, the green energy transition was seen at
odds to our security. I would argue exactly the opposite.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
What did you recommend the Defense Department do when it
thinks about climate change, but as an impact on how
it's going to have to protect the UK, but also
as its role in doing some of this green procurement,
in pushing technologies forward, introducing emissions. Where is the UK now,
how many of those steps has it followed and what
(25:56):
more can it do?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
I think most people in the climate world who I
speak to would say nobody is doing anything fast enough,
and they're not doing enough. The Ministry of Defense will
fall into that as well, of course, because you know
they're a they have to be careful that everything they
do increases our capability rather than reduces it. And you know,
(26:18):
I famously said, you can have the greenest navy, the
greenest air force, and the greatest army in the world,
but if you come second in a war, you come
second in a war. And that's not what we're paid
to do. So we need to be quite careful. And
what did I suggest in the first five years? Take
advantage of the existing technologies, particularly in our bases. You know,
there's perfectly good solar panels, they're cheap. Why wouldn't we
(26:40):
use those now to create the electricity that we need?
And we spend an enormous amount of money or the
MODS or keep on saying we, but the Ministry of
Defense spends an enormous amount of money on energy every year.
If they can reduce that by creating their own, then
that surely is a good thing. The second thing I suggested,
and this is so important, the MOD needs to put
the concept of climate change and adapting to climate change
(27:03):
into its processes. And that sounds really dull, but actually,
if you put it into your processes, if you have
sort of what I call no return valves, you have
to jump that fence. You have to ask the question
about the world that we're going to be living in
in twenty fifty, assuming a two degree or more in
(27:27):
twenty fifty. And interestingly, the Committion Climate Change when I
was talking to them, when I was writing the report,
were asking the Ministry of Defense to look at two
scenarios at a two degree increase and a four degree increase.
The idea that we'd stick to one point five was
was already in the Committee of Climate Change at that time.
They're thinking it was already we'd go beyond that, and
I think they're realistic in that case, looking at how
(27:49):
will our equipments that Broadly speaking, we plan the Ministry
Defense plans on a forty year life cycle. If you
work on that basis, equipment bought in twenty twenty will
be still around in twenty sixty. What is the environment
it's going to be operating under. You have to build
that into process, because nobody's going to come to a
(28:10):
decision based on a theoretical unless it's in the process.
What has the mod done. They have built that into
the process already, They have built the adaptation of we
might be looking at fifty to fifty five degrees as
a norm in various parts of the world, rather than
completely exceptional. They built into the process the idea that
(28:33):
surface sea temperature could be much higher than it is
today and therefore is going to be less effective in
cooling the engines of our warships. The second thing, or
the third thing is is actually changing the culture, and
I reckon it would take five years to change the culture.
Has that culture changed? It is changing. It is changing
where people are very aware of what climate change is doing.
(28:56):
What's the sort of sustainability And sustainability is really simple.
If you have fragile supply chains for rare earths because
they're all processed in China, for example, if you have
fragile supply chains, what do you do well, Actually, you
need to recycle what you've got. The military have been
exceptionally good at recycling certain things. So the brass cartridge
(29:18):
cases out of our artillery and out of our infantry
when we're in training, that all is recycled. We've been
done that for years and years and years, so this
is nothing new, but actually it's new things that we
need to think about recycling that would be much better
for the Ministry Defense and would be cheaper. So there's
various things that the Ministry Defense is already doing and
is doubling down on. There's various things that they have
(29:41):
put into process which is beginning to work. But the
next ten years and the fifteen years beyond that, of course,
was much looser in the strategy and in the strategic thinking,
because I mean I remember saying to somebody I was
writing this in twenty twenty and saying, you know how
many of thees we following that were written in nineteen ninety. Well,
(30:03):
of course the world's changed out of all proportion between
nineteen nineteen twenty twenty, so it's going to change dramatically.
So you can't prescript. You can't prescribe, much as people
would love us to do, say, but you can't do that,
So you have to come up with just options and ideas,
and that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
It is interesting to realize how supply chains can be
such a bottleneck for all sorts of things. I mean
the fact that the US and China's trade war was
predicated on being resolved if China provided enough magnets and
the metals to make those magnets to the US. Tells
(30:41):
you that even if the amount of those materials is small,
the value of those materials in commercial terms is small,
their strategic importance is so much that the two largest
economies have made peace for now based on access to
those minerals. But if you were to think now, having
(31:03):
done this report five years ago, what have you changed
your mind about? What is it that you recommended that
you would change or you would go further.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
It's always difficult to ask somebody who's written a report
to then say that they would change it. I think
the basic I tried to put it into basic principles
and basic tenets rather than specific detail. I would argue
that actually what I missed was the newer technologist coming
on board. I said, for five years, work with existing technologies.
(31:36):
For the ten years after that, work with technologies, or
at least begin to understand what new technologies are about.
Those new technologies are coming on stream so fast. But
I think there is a very, very different There is
war already in Europe, which wasn't there when I wrote
the report. But I think this point that you make
about supply chains and about China, and I did not
(31:56):
know at the time that eighty percent of lithium. Five
percent of cobalt or or there thereabouts is processed in China.
It doesn't come from China, but it's all taken to
China to be processed. That provides a bottleneck. I would
argue that no country should rely on one other country
that does eighty percent of the processing of anything, because
(32:19):
you become completely dependent on that country. The fact that
it's China doesn't help the case, but if it was,
if it was a friendly country, I would not advise
it either. And so I think understanding those supply chains,
I would put far more emphasis into the recycling and
the sustainability and trying to find alternatives to those supply
(32:39):
chains than I did in the report, because I think
that we have become a much more polarized world since
I wrote that report, and that means that we're much
more vulnerable to changes in geostrategic politics and the geopolitics
of the power games that are happening between Russia, China,
and America particularly. We're much more vulnerable to that, and
(33:01):
I think, of course politicians are seeing that now.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
What has changed since you wrote the report is how
much more extreme weather impacts the world is seeing and
how many more times, militaries around the world are being
deployed to try and help countries deal with these impacts.
What should militaries be thinking about if they are tapped
into doing this kind of work more and more as
(33:26):
the planet keeps getting hotter.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
My first point would be I completely agree with you
if you look at what happened in Pakistan in the
huge floods in Pakistan, and they have a very large military,
but about a third of the military was deployed in
order to try and solve some of the problems of floods.
The military is very large because they see a huge
threat from India, and therefore you know it is there
for a purpose which is to defend the country against India.
(33:48):
Now that's a perceived threat. To put a third of
that into dealing with floods is a very significant move
for any country. So absolutely militaries are being used more
and more often. What does that bring. First of all,
there have been calls and there work calls even when
I was writing a report to create an alternative force
(34:10):
to be able to deal with humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
And I would argue that in war, if you're at war, yes,
that's probably necessary, but all sorts of things change if
you're actually at war. In peace, it's probably not necessary.
Because it is very good training for the military to
be able to do this, and it is a purpose
(34:32):
for the military's secondary purpose I get, But it's a
purpose for the military. What should the militaries be doing.
They should be honing their skills far more effectively. They
should make sure they have the right equipment, far more
of the right equipment to be able to deal with
these humanitarian assistants and disasters. And also we should be collaborating.
This is a really good militaries on the whole collaborate
(34:53):
on a even keel. Now when they're at war, of
course it ain't. But militaries will think alike broadly speaking,
they tend to get on well with each other. Broadly speaking.
It is the politicians who set them against each other.
I would always argue that, you know, I could walk
into the Australian Ministry of Defense and it would be
(35:14):
more familiar to me when I was serving than walking
into the UK Home Office because our way of thinking
was so similar. All our problems were the same. Militaries
broadly speaking, have the same problems. Of course, the solutions
are very very different. So it is an opportunity for
militaries to collaborate. Militaries that wouldn't naturally collaborate because they
(35:37):
have nothing, you know, there's name into politics. There could
collaborate and learn and build together a humanitary assistance and
disaster relief concept and equipment and so on as a
way of getting closer together. That by the way, if
militaries are reluctant to fight each other, it causes politicians
(35:57):
to pause. Doesn't cause them to stop, but it causes
them to pause.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Well, in a world where there's more fractures happening and
geopolitics is getting more divided, any moment to find places
to collaborate is a good place to end the conversation.
Thank you, Richard, Thank you very much, indeed, and thank
you for listening to zero. Now for the sound of
(36:22):
the week. That's the sound of a robot doing low
grade parkore. Militaries around the world are looking to deploy
these kinds of robots in warfare. You might even have
(36:43):
spotted robot dogs at the US military parade held just
a few weeks ago. If you liked this episode, please
take a moment to rate and review the show on
Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Share this episode with a friend
or with someone in the military. This episode was produced
by Oscar Boyd and Jessica Beck. Theme music is composed
by Wonderly Special Thanks to Laura Milan, Samersadi, Moses andam
(37:05):
and Shawan wagner I am Akshatrati back soon.
Welcome to zero. I am Akshadarati. This week, can warfare
go green? It's been a tense few months. Just a
couple of weeks ago, it felt like the world was
(00:23):
on the brink of another world war when the US
bombed Iranian nuclear sites. And while World War three may
have been averted for now, there are more than one
hundred armed conflicts still going These wars don't just kill people,
but they are also responsible for a huge amount of
carbon emissions. By some estimates, the US military is the
(00:44):
world's largest consumer of oil. As one US general said
in twenty eleven, energy is the lifeblood of our war
fighting capabilities. Western economies are now gearing up for a
big expansion of military spending. The thirty two member countries
that form NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty organization, have agreed
(01:04):
to increase defense spending to a staggering five percent of
their GDP by twenty thirty five. That will be trillions
of dollars more going to an enormously carbon intensive industry.
But few people want to talk about carbon emissions and wars.
It's one reason why defense departments have escaped the scrutiny
faced by businesses or even other parts of government. If
(01:27):
all that money goes to buying casoline hungary equipment that
keeps militaries around the world hooked to fossil fuels, it
will make fighting climate change even harder. And the trouble
is climate change is a threat multiplier. The hotter the planet,
the higher the risks of conflicts, and the deadlier those wars.
Somehow this circle needs to be squared. While countries feel
(01:50):
they must spend more on militaries, doing so in a
way that will increase emissions is also not in the
interest of national security.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
You know, I always get criticized by people who call
we woke for thinking climate and military that I'm thinking
about electric tanks. I'm not, but there is an absolute
truth in the view that electric drives on a vehicle
makes that vehicle better.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
My guest today is Richard Nuji, who was left and
in General in the British Army equan into a three
star general. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in
twenty twenty one, before he retired from the military, he
published a report on what the UK's military must do
in the face of climate change. The report considered both
how the British military is affected by climate change and
(02:34):
what it must do to cut its emissions. I wanted
to find out from Richard whether militaries are taking the
risks of climate change seriously, can warfare go green? And
does the increase in native spending come at the expense
of global climate goals. Welcome to the show, Richard.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
So when you were on tour in Afghanistan or in Iraq,
did you ever think about how climate impacts might affect
the work you were doing on the ground.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
So I suppose the really interesting moment for me was
in Iraq in two thousand and three. I sort of commanded,
loose word everything south of Basra, but at the size
of whales, with one thousand soldiers in my battle group.
And we were there therefore in the summer of two
thousand and three, after the war had finished, and it
got up to about fifty degrees and what was very evident,
(03:28):
and most of the time the heat was very very
dry heat. So the wind came from the north and
so down through the desert, and so it was dried
out by the time it got to us in the
scith of Iraq. But for two weeks of the year
there was a thing which the Iraqis and I can't
remember the word in their language, but it translated as
the cooker where the wind backed and came up the gulf,
and there you therefore had one hundred percent of humidity
(03:50):
and fifty degrees a heat that's actually physically impossible for
humans to live in. And so we were really really
struggling to be able to operate in an environment where
it was so hot that you took a shower, you
dried off, you were immediately soaked again. You woke up soaked,
You moved two meters, you were soaked because you were
sweating so much. I had one soldier who drank sixteen
(04:12):
liters of water and was still dehydrated. We had, out
of the thousand odd soldiers over time, we used two
hundred and fifty about drips to keep people with enough
moisture in their bodies, and we had to send five
people home for heat stroke. Now, wars in the Middle
(04:32):
Ages always the biggest killer was not the war itself,
but was disease, and was dysentery and things like that.
I lost no soldiers on that tour, very sadly. One
died from a heart attack, but I lost no soldiers
through enemy action. But I lost five back to the
UK because of heat, and I put in hospitals, if
(04:54):
so to speak, for a short time two hundred and fifty.
So the heat had a very There was no wh conditioning.
We were living in what was their buildings. We got tents,
but they weren't air conditioned. That all came much later
for the troops, much later. So there's a piece there
about soldiers always find it difficult to operate in intense heat.
(05:16):
That is really intense heat, And so that came to
me that actually, as the world is getting warmer, and
I don't think anybody can deny the world's getting warmer,
it is going to make it more difficult for soldiers
to operate. And then there's all sorts of equipment issues
as well.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
We should come to talking about, now, how does national security, defense,
the military think about climate change in both operating conditions
and in trying to tackle the problem, because the military
does contribute to the problem in big ways. But before
we go there, the report that you ended up writing
in twenty twenty one, as a result of starting to
(05:52):
think about climate change and the impact on military and
what it could do, you had in your introduction, these
words and to read them because they're in a way prophetic,
and we are living through it now. You said, the
threats of our modern world, made worse by rising seas,
extreme weather, and creeping desertification, will almost certainly lead to
(06:14):
more conflict, and more conflict in itself will damage the planet.
Those in conflict will not be able to focus on
the climate, and instead we'll be creating more emissions whilst
in conflict. We are seeing many more conflicts now relative
to twenty twenty one when he wrote the report the
war between Russia and Ukraine. What's happening in Gaza, America's
(06:36):
attack on Iran. We can't say climate change caused them.
A lot of the conflicts that have happened around the
world may have climate as a contributing factor in some places.
Syria is probably the best studied, but it is true
right now, with all that's happening, the military's focus is
very much on fighting and not on climate. So at
(06:59):
such a time, given the work you've done, how do
you get the leadership to think about climate change at all.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
It's a very good question, because it is that perennial
question of the urgent over the important and the urgent,
as we used to say in the military, the crocodile
closest to the canoe is going to be the threat
of war in Europe, the threat of war with Russia.
You know, Europe's part of ETO. But you've also got
wars around you know, you've got more wars around the world,
(07:28):
and that for a military person, you have to focus
on the enemy in front of you. And the enemy
in front of you is a physical presence if you like,
it's a Russian army or Russian Air Force or Russian
navy or whatever. So how do you say, well, hang
on a minute, there's something which is contributing to might
be causing those wars in the first place. And the
answer comes from I think two things. One is for
(07:53):
militaries as much as for politicians, understanding the causes of
war is an important step to understanding how to create
a lasting piece. No war ends, or very very few
wars end without some sort of political settlement. So understanding
the causes of those wars is really really important. And
(08:14):
if climate change is part of that, then you need
to understand that. As a soldier, you need to understand
those causes. It won't answer the question immediately in front
of you, but you do begin to understand the causes.
That's the first piece, and the second piece is about
how can militaries bluntly take advantage of the technologies that
are trying to solve the climate change issues to make
(08:36):
themselves a better, more effective military. So there's a win
win here. One is understanding the causes of war and
the other is embracing the technologies to try and make
your prosecution of that war more effective by looking at
some of the new technologies that are coming onside.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And it's also true that given the importance of national security,
defense departments around the world tend to be the better funded.
Departments tend to be the places where governments have slightly
loser purses because it is seen as a threat that
needs to be managed and it is seen as an
urgent threat. So for a long time there has been
(09:15):
discussion that because the defense departments have more money, and
they are also places where frontier technologies have tended to
be used or deployed or developed as a result, that
those would be the places where we could be pioneering
a lot of green technologies because they could be good
(09:35):
for the military and they will have civilian users. Do
what are success stories that you think exist today in
that basket and how could we build more of them?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So I'll I'll give one example, and how much of
a success story is it that you could debate? But
sustainable aviation fuel. If you look at when I write
the report in twenty twenty one, seventy some percent of
the Row Air Forces emissions were from fuel. And that's
fairly logical. Fast jets use an awful lot of fuel. Interestingly,
fifty five percent of the Navy's emissions were fueled. For
(10:09):
the Army, it's it's down below ten percent. Is their equipment.
Actually most of it is on their land mass. So
if you're trying to tackle the problem of fuel and emissions,
then you need to find an alternative. And the alternative
does exist. It's called sustainable aviation fuel. There's lots of
different types of sustainable aviation fuel there, but there's an
absolute key, if you like, requirement of the Air Force
(10:31):
if they're going to get their emissions down to go
down that route. So what did the Air Force do?
And of course they're not unique in this, but what
they did is they first of all got the whole
of NATO. The Royal Air Force got the whole of
NATO to agree a protocol which said that all equipments
NATO equipments should be capable of taking fifty percent sustainable
aviation fuel. So it's now expanded beyond just a single
(10:54):
military the Royal Air Force in our case, to militaries
across NATO should have the capable ability. It doesn't mean
to say they have to use it, but they should
have the capability to do so. Because there are different
protocols of different fuels with the intent and I don't
know whether that intent will be met or not because
it's in the future. The intent of being able to
ap protocol to say you'd be able to take one
(11:16):
hundred percent sustainable aviation fuel by about twenty forty. That
sends a message to the market. That's the first thing,
which is quite important. It's the message to the market.
The second thing is that the role LEVELCE has been
experimenting with sustained aviation fuel. So we have flown our
first fast jet with saf we've flown our first passenger aircraft,
(11:36):
but they called voyagers, which are also refueling tankers which
are also used for cargo. Using SAF one hundred percent SAF.
So that shows that not only is their intent theoretical intent,
there's practical application and we have shown that we can
do it. Then you look at why would anybody pay
attention to us, And there's two very very good reasons.
(11:57):
One is, if the Air Force, so the Ministry of
Defense says it wants to buy some, you can guarantee
as much as anything can be guaranteed that they will
pay once they've got the fuel. They're not going to
go bust. So there's a guarantee of income for somebody
creating SAF. The second piece is it shows that there
(12:19):
is a government backing to sustainable aviation fuel. So all
those tiny companies that are creating SAF, that are speculating
whether the civil aviation industry or not, will buy it.
As it is more expensive at the moment. In due
course it'll be as cheap, I believe, but that will
take time and it'll take certain circumstances. But the fact
(12:40):
that the government is prepared to invest and say yes,
we want it is something that sends a very significant
message to the market, but more importantly sends a message
to those producers who are relatively small. They're all startups,
so to speak, they might have scaled to a certain extent.
It gives them confidence to go with it.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
It's also happening in the US where the Defense Department
is putting out requests for more advanced battery technologies because
those technologies are being used in warfare today. We've seen
how Ukraine was able to use drones to be able
to destroy a lot of very key and very expensive
infrastructure in Russia. And so people who I've talked to
(13:22):
who've worked in climate tech, who do battery research are
finding Defense Department procurement requests coming in or development requests
coming in for advanced batteries. You do get these impacts
and also places where maybe climate is not the focus,
but the technology itself might be developed and have climate users.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Absolutely, And I think there's a really important piece here
about Julius technology, and it's something that I would say
again and again again because people didn't understand it. Most
people when they think defense, they think weapons, and they
will say that my technology for green transitional green technology
has no purpose in weapons, and they're right, but it
(14:03):
completely misunderstands how ministries of defense work. And in the army,
as an example, thirty percent of the actual army. Of
the British Army, thirty percent is at the tip of
the spear. The other seventy percent is the shaft of
the spear supporting that tip, and of course the shaft
of the spear, if I can use that analogy, is
(14:24):
far more than weapons. In fact, it's not weapons, it's
it's everything else. It's medical, there's logistics, there's batteries, there's vehicles,
there's maintenance, there's so much else, and all of that
can translate relatively simply into the civilian market. And so
this duel use technology which which many people don't see
the value of my technology. It's a green technology. Why
(14:46):
would the Ministry of Defense be interested? The answer is
they're thinking too narrowly about what defense is about. Give
you just one example, very simple example, which is we
traditionally have had diesel driven vehicles in the army andre tanks. Now,
I'm absolutely not suggesting, and you know, I always get
criticized by people who call me woke for thinking climate
(15:06):
and military that I'm thinking about electric tanks. I'm not,
but there is an absolute truth in the view that
electric drives on a vehicle makes that vehicle better. It's
better for all sorts of reasons. It's better for the
obvious reasons that you're silent. You don't have the same
transmission in terms of heat or in terms of exhausts.
(15:30):
None of that can be seen by the enemy because
you're silent and your stable in terms of heat. But
it's also easier to drive. They're better vehicles because the
battery weight is all at the lowest level of the vehicle,
and therefore you've got a much better weight distribution on
the vehicle, which makes them better off road. And on
(15:50):
top of that, you don't have for the soldiers in
that vehicle the vibration and the noise which actually dulls
their senses over time. So it's a much much better vehicle.
Now I'm not advocating one hundred percent electric because that
becomes too susceptible to too many areas of range anxiety
is how civilians call it. But there's all sorts of
things on the battlefield. WI woull make that difficult. But
(16:12):
hybrid vehicles, which are basically electric vehicles with a little
diesel engine to recharge the battery, that is a really
successful opportunity for people in the military to use. Julius
technology coming out of the ev world to come into
the military, and then on top of that, you can
use the batteries for recharging your radios, recharging all those
(16:33):
electronic devices of which each individual soldier has. There is
masses of opportunity for technology that doesn't seem to have
a value in the military actually being presented to the
military and saying, look, we can do this, can you
find a use for it in the military, And nine
times out of ten will say, actually, do you know
what we can find a use for that.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
In a way, it's nice that people don't think about
their technologies having weapons use, because most of the time
we are living in peaceful times and we don't have
to think about weapons. But it is worth remembering that
in the past it is militaries that have decided the
kind of technology that the world runs on. The famous
(17:13):
example of Churchill deciding to move the Navy from burning
coal to burning oil is what ushered in the era
of oil in the twentieth century. Now you're talking about
electrification and about the use of hybrids, there are limits,
especially if we talk about military uses, on how much
(17:35):
electrification could do. So a fast jet is not going
to be running on batteries. Neither is a tank. But
how much further can electrification go into the military space
and where are those opportunities today?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
You're right, and as I say, I'm not arguing for
one hundred cent electric tank, but there's a number of
other areas where it can be used. If we have
have overseas bases, whether they're temporary bases, well let's go
for temporary bases operational bases. One of the issues in
Iraq and Afghanistan was the delivery of oil to patrol
bases and forward bases so that we could run our
(18:15):
vehicles out of them. Whether it was helicopters that were
landing and had to be refueled, and that didn't happen
often at the forward bases, but whether it was the
vehicles that the soldiers used. In order to be able
to patrol, you need fuel to get there. The American
Army Armed Forces lost somewhere between two and three thousand
soldiers killed just getting fuel through. The British lost their
(18:38):
most senior officer killed in Afghanistan getting the fuel through.
So if you can design a power supply that doesn't
rely on diesel in these operational bases so much you
don't need to get so much fuel through and therefore
you're going to lose fewer lives, it's going to cost less.
And also you can use the equipment that is protecting
those fuel convoys out somewhere else. A very good argument
(19:01):
and Rolls Royce and it's supported by the government. Rolls
Royce is looking at micronuclear where you can put on
nuclear power station effectively, and a forty foot container. If
you put that forty foot container into one of our
operational bases, you can bury it, you can make sure
it's secure. Then actually you have almost unlimited fuel and
therefore you do not need diesel to go down the
road to be able to charge your generators or to
(19:23):
charge your vehicles. So that's one side of it. The
other side of it is our permanent bases. You can
look at building resilience through having solar panels, we're looking
at hydro, We're looking at wind on our bases. We
have a lot of bases around the world, permanent bases,
either abroad or in this country in the UK, where
actually we need to produce two things. One we need
(19:45):
to produce electricity for the base, and if you can
do that cheaper through green energy, then why wouldn't you.
But more importantly, it provides that resilience. I would imagine
the Spanish and Portuguese armed forces would be a little
bit embarrassed that they might not have been able to
get out of their camp in that blackout. And yet
the one time you need the armed forces is when
you have something like a blackout or where you have
(20:07):
some sort of trauma that is causing a problem to
the country. If you have your own electricity supply, because
you've gone down the green energy route and the green
transition route, you have the ability to get out of
the barracks and you have the ability to be able
to operate even in the environment where there is a
blackout on the national grid. That's really important. If we're genuinely,
(20:27):
if the military are genuinely the force of last resort,
then they need to be able to operate under any conditions.
And therefore, if you create your own electricity, then you
are more secure and you're more resilient.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
We'll be back with more of my conversation with Richard
Nuji after this break, and Hey, if you're finding this
episode insightful, please take a moment to rate and review
the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback really
matters and helps new listeners discover the show. Thank you.
(21:06):
With all these conflicts, defense departments are increasing spending, especially
in NATO, which just recently met and the members agreed
except Spain, to increase their spending to five percent of
the country's gross domestic product by twenty thirty five. Now,
not all of that needs to go into weapons, but
(21:28):
a lot of it will go into weapons. Is there
a risk that a lot of the green spending which
these same governments whose budgets are tight, who do not
have the capacity to borrow too much, are going to
redirect that green spending into defense instead.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
So, first of all, I would say that the straight
and a half per cent is getting to defense as
a whole rather than just two weapons. And one of
the interesting angles that the Defense Review took published last
month was to absolutely not say what size the armed
forces should be, because what it said is just we
(22:07):
need to grow the armed forces. So it's not just weapons,
it's it's people, it's it's all the support that I
was talking about earlier. So, first of all, three and
a half per cent is not just weapons, and the
one and a half per cent can be used for quote,
national security and resilience. So there's huge scope actually for
national security and resilience to be part of the green
(22:28):
solutions that the country is trying to do as well.
But to the basis of your question is are the
two incompatible with each other? Is one stealing from the other?
I think the answer is absolutely not. A more resilient nation,
a nation that is more self sufficient in energy particularly
is an advantage to our defense. I'll take a very
(22:51):
very simple historical example, and of course it doesn't translate
immediately and totally, but in the Second World War fuel
oil was really limited because we had to bring all
the oil to this country through the Atlantic where things
were being sunk by submarines, U boats and through other vehicles.
(23:13):
You know, everything had to come by sea. So what
did the country do It limited rationed fuel for the
average citizen so that the vast majority of the fuel
could go to the military. And in fact, the only
people really who who were given a ration were transport
companies so that people could use public transport, and farmers
(23:36):
because we had to create food. Translate that into the
twenty first century, our militaries are still using oil whether
it's diesel or whatever, for the ability to fight. So
we're still going to need to import huge amounts of
fuel in much more contested waters in a war where
somemarines are more effective and it's much more you know,
it's much more difficult to defend tankers and so on,
(23:57):
partly because of their size. The country itself cannot rely
to the same level. We can't ration in the same
way that we did in the Second World War because
everything's much more electrified. Act everything's you know, much more
reliant on oil than it used to be, much more reliant.
So what is the alternative? The alternative and interesting I
(24:18):
was reading an article just this morning. The alternative is
to use less oil, and that's not necessarily for a
green reason, but that of course is an advantage to
the whole climate issue. But it's so that if oil
is restricted in more you have already built the alternatives.
(24:38):
To my mind, it is entirely logical to say that
the defense and the war effort, if you had to
go down that route, is reinforced by having green energy
and going further with the green energy transition, because actually
what you're doing is providing resilience to a country that
becomes less dependent on oil and more dependent on self
(24:59):
create energy, which means that the limited oil that might
come across the seas to US can be used for
the military. To make sure that you don't limit the military,
because the military are going to need every drop of
oil in order to be able to fight effectively, and
that's what you want your militaries to do. So I
see the two as completely compatible and completely in unison,
(25:20):
and it would be a tragic mistake if, through politics
and through politicization, the green energy transition was seen at
odds to our security. I would argue exactly the opposite.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
What did you recommend the Defense Department do when it
thinks about climate change, but as an impact on how
it's going to have to protect the UK, but also
as its role in doing some of this green procurement,
in pushing technologies forward, introducing emissions. Where is the UK now,
how many of those steps has it followed and what
(25:56):
more can it do?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
I think most people in the climate world who I
speak to would say nobody is doing anything fast enough,
and they're not doing enough. The Ministry of Defense will
fall into that as well, of course, because you know
they're a they have to be careful that everything they
do increases our capability rather than reduces it. And you know,
(26:18):
I famously said, you can have the greenest navy, the
greenest air force, and the greatest army in the world,
but if you come second in a war, you come
second in a war. And that's not what we're paid
to do. So we need to be quite careful. And
what did I suggest in the first five years? Take
advantage of the existing technologies, particularly in our bases. You know,
there's perfectly good solar panels, they're cheap. Why wouldn't we
(26:40):
use those now to create the electricity that we need?
And we spend an enormous amount of money or the
MODS or keep on saying we, but the Ministry of
Defense spends an enormous amount of money on energy every year.
If they can reduce that by creating their own, then
that surely is a good thing. The second thing I suggested,
and this is so important, the MOD needs to put
the concept of climate change and adapting to climate change
(27:03):
into its processes. And that sounds really dull, but actually,
if you put it into your processes, if you have
sort of what I call no return valves, you have
to jump that fence. You have to ask the question
about the world that we're going to be living in
in twenty fifty, assuming a two degree or more in
(27:27):
twenty fifty. And interestingly, the Committion Climate Change when I
was talking to them, when I was writing the report,
were asking the Ministry of Defense to look at two
scenarios at a two degree increase and a four degree increase.
The idea that we'd stick to one point five was
was already in the Committee of Climate Change at that time.
They're thinking it was already we'd go beyond that, and
I think they're realistic in that case, looking at how
(27:49):
will our equipments that Broadly speaking, we plan the Ministry
Defense plans on a forty year life cycle. If you
work on that basis, equipment bought in twenty twenty will
be still around in twenty sixty. What is the environment
it's going to be operating under. You have to build
that into process, because nobody's going to come to a
(28:10):
decision based on a theoretical unless it's in the process.
What has the mod done. They have built that into
the process already, They have built the adaptation of we
might be looking at fifty to fifty five degrees as
a norm in various parts of the world, rather than
completely exceptional. They built into the process the idea that
(28:33):
surface sea temperature could be much higher than it is
today and therefore is going to be less effective in
cooling the engines of our warships. The second thing, or
the third thing is is actually changing the culture, and
I reckon it would take five years to change the culture.
Has that culture changed? It is changing. It is changing
where people are very aware of what climate change is doing.
(28:56):
What's the sort of sustainability And sustainability is really simple.
If you have fragile supply chains for rare earths because
they're all processed in China, for example, if you have
fragile supply chains, what do you do well, Actually, you
need to recycle what you've got. The military have been
exceptionally good at recycling certain things. So the brass cartridge
(29:18):
cases out of our artillery and out of our infantry
when we're in training, that all is recycled. We've been
done that for years and years and years, so this
is nothing new, but actually it's new things that we
need to think about recycling that would be much better
for the Ministry Defense and would be cheaper. So there's
various things that the Ministry Defense is already doing and
is doubling down on. There's various things that they have
(29:41):
put into process which is beginning to work. But the
next ten years and the fifteen years beyond that, of course,
was much looser in the strategy and in the strategic thinking,
because I mean I remember saying to somebody I was
writing this in twenty twenty and saying, you know how
many of thees we following that were written in nineteen ninety. Well,
(30:03):
of course the world's changed out of all proportion between
nineteen nineteen twenty twenty, so it's going to change dramatically.
So you can't prescript. You can't prescribe, much as people
would love us to do, say, but you can't do that,
So you have to come up with just options and ideas,
and that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
It is interesting to realize how supply chains can be
such a bottleneck for all sorts of things. I mean
the fact that the US and China's trade war was
predicated on being resolved if China provided enough magnets and
the metals to make those magnets to the US. Tells
(30:41):
you that even if the amount of those materials is small,
the value of those materials in commercial terms is small,
their strategic importance is so much that the two largest
economies have made peace for now based on access to
those minerals. But if you were to think now, having
(31:03):
done this report five years ago, what have you changed
your mind about? What is it that you recommended that
you would change or you would go further.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
It's always difficult to ask somebody who's written a report
to then say that they would change it. I think
the basic I tried to put it into basic principles
and basic tenets rather than specific detail. I would argue
that actually what I missed was the newer technologist coming
on board. I said, for five years, work with existing technologies.
(31:36):
For the ten years after that, work with technologies, or
at least begin to understand what new technologies are about.
Those new technologies are coming on stream so fast. But
I think there is a very, very different There is
war already in Europe, which wasn't there when I wrote
the report. But I think this point that you make
about supply chains and about China, and I did not
(31:56):
know at the time that eighty percent of lithium. Five
percent of cobalt or or there thereabouts is processed in China.
It doesn't come from China, but it's all taken to
China to be processed. That provides a bottleneck. I would
argue that no country should rely on one other country
that does eighty percent of the processing of anything, because
(32:19):
you become completely dependent on that country. The fact that
it's China doesn't help the case, but if it was,
if it was a friendly country, I would not advise
it either. And so I think understanding those supply chains,
I would put far more emphasis into the recycling and
the sustainability and trying to find alternatives to those supply
(32:39):
chains than I did in the report, because I think
that we have become a much more polarized world since
I wrote that report, and that means that we're much
more vulnerable to changes in geostrategic politics and the geopolitics
of the power games that are happening between Russia, China,
and America particularly. We're much more vulnerable to that, and
(33:01):
I think, of course politicians are seeing that now.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
What has changed since you wrote the report is how
much more extreme weather impacts the world is seeing and
how many more times, militaries around the world are being
deployed to try and help countries deal with these impacts.
What should militaries be thinking about if they are tapped
into doing this kind of work more and more as
(33:26):
the planet keeps getting hotter.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
My first point would be I completely agree with you
if you look at what happened in Pakistan in the
huge floods in Pakistan, and they have a very large military,
but about a third of the military was deployed in
order to try and solve some of the problems of floods.
The military is very large because they see a huge
threat from India, and therefore you know it is there
for a purpose which is to defend the country against India.
(33:48):
Now that's a perceived threat. To put a third of
that into dealing with floods is a very significant move
for any country. So absolutely militaries are being used more
and more often. What does that bring. First of all,
there have been calls and there work calls even when
I was writing a report to create an alternative force
(34:10):
to be able to deal with humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
And I would argue that in war, if you're at war, yes,
that's probably necessary, but all sorts of things change if
you're actually at war. In peace, it's probably not necessary.
Because it is very good training for the military to
be able to do this, and it is a purpose
(34:32):
for the military's secondary purpose I get, But it's a
purpose for the military. What should the militaries be doing.
They should be honing their skills far more effectively. They
should make sure they have the right equipment, far more
of the right equipment to be able to deal with
these humanitarian assistants and disasters. And also we should be collaborating.
This is a really good militaries on the whole collaborate
(34:53):
on a even keel. Now when they're at war, of
course it ain't. But militaries will think alike broadly speaking,
they tend to get on well with each other. Broadly speaking.
It is the politicians who set them against each other.
I would always argue that, you know, I could walk
into the Australian Ministry of Defense and it would be
(35:14):
more familiar to me when I was serving than walking
into the UK Home Office because our way of thinking
was so similar. All our problems were the same. Militaries
broadly speaking, have the same problems. Of course, the solutions
are very very different. So it is an opportunity for
militaries to collaborate. Militaries that wouldn't naturally collaborate because they
(35:37):
have nothing, you know, there's name into politics. There could
collaborate and learn and build together a humanitary assistance and
disaster relief concept and equipment and so on as a
way of getting closer together. That by the way, if
militaries are reluctant to fight each other, it causes politicians
(35:57):
to pause. Doesn't cause them to stop, but it causes
them to pause.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Well, in a world where there's more fractures happening and
geopolitics is getting more divided, any moment to find places
to collaborate is a good place to end the conversation.
Thank you, Richard, Thank you very much, indeed, and thank
you for listening to zero. Now for the sound of
(36:22):
the week. That's the sound of a robot doing low
grade parkore. Militaries around the world are looking to deploy
these kinds of robots in warfare. You might even have
(36:43):
spotted robot dogs at the US military parade held just
a few weeks ago. If you liked this episode, please
take a moment to rate and review the show on
Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Share this episode with a friend
or with someone in the military. This episode was produced
by Oscar Boyd and Jessica Beck. Theme music is composed
by Wonderly Special Thanks to Laura Milan, Samersadi, Moses andam
(37:05):
and Shawan wagner I am Akshatrati back soon.
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