Show Notes
Lennard de Klerk is the lead author of the Initiative on Greenhouse Gas Accounting of War and has worked on climate change for more than 25 years. Today, his focus is the emissions from war and the military, including the work of calculating the climate cost of the war in Ukraine. In this conversation, I wanted to ask Lennard whether NATO’s push towards 3.5% of GDP on defence can ever sit alongside net zero, and why most military emissions come from peacetime operations rather than active conflict. Lennard breaks down where the roughly 311 million tonnes of CO2 from four years of war in Ukraine came from, including warfare itself, landscape fires, reconstruction and rerouted flights, explains how fossil fuel dependence is also a security weakness, and shares what a post-war rebuild with hemp, recycled steel and low-carbon cement could look like. We also chat about the effort to have Russia held accountable for climate damage through the Council of Europe’s compensation process, what the social cost of carbon really measures, and why Lennard stopped flying within Europe. —— Find Lennard’s work: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warbon/?originalSubdomain=ua Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/ And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/ —— 0:00 Does increasing defence spending shatter climate targets? 4:40 The 2 competing worlds of defence and climate 8:14 Why calculate the Ukraine war carbon emissions? 12:35 Military emissions are 5.5% of the global total 15:55 The war in Ukraine as another Finland 17:15 What militaries say when you bring up their emissions 20:53 Cutting fossil fuels is a defence strategy 27:32 Biofuels, hydrogen and the alternative fuel problem 29:36 Militaries have gone quiet on their climate targets 30:16 Where the emissions from the war in Ukraine come from 34:24 Wildfires fuelled by war and climate change 37:00 Rebuilding Ukraine with cement and steel 39:32 The flight detours caused by closed Russian airspace 43:28 Building back better, with hemp and recycled concrete 48:06 Replanting Ukraine’s forests for a hotter future 49:24 Can Russia be held liable for climate damage? 56:18 Can a Russian superyacht fund climate claims? 59:08 What on earth is the social cost of carbon? 1:03:18 Why Lennard stopped flying within Europe 1:06:48 Balancing personal footprint with the huge war emissions 1:10:00 The question Lennard wishes more people would ask
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