climate question about this. You can find them by searching what does war in Ukraine mean for the climate on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts, but in this episode, we're going to look directly at the effect of war on greenhouse gas emissions, and that's the challenge that Leonard decided to take on what struck me as an expert in carbon footprinting that military missions are really a blind spot as Leonard discovered the whole issue is, if not a blind spot in Carbon accounting. Certainly a great area. The story starts with lobbying by the US government as need to Crawford, a professor in international relations at Oxford University, told me in nineteen-eighty-seven the problem of defence said that they wanted an ex ambition for reporting of military missions for not just the us but for all countries and and 0 protocol negotiations they got that, So most countries including the United States military emissions are not included in their reports to the climate change how, why did they negotiate that exemption. The argument was that even a 10% cut to us military emissions would mean a drastic decrease in the capacity of the United States military to prosecute wars to train and in fact maintained dominance in the world so they argued that these emissions should be reported because that would be the road to getting them. Then in the Paris agreement on climate change in twenty-fifteen international reporting of military emissions was made voluntary most countries don't do it. And for those that do It's patchy at best and often hidden within other sectors like aviation things then the US Department of defence has published some of its emissions. On its website. But it's not a complete picture needs a who spent her career studying the costs of war has done her own calculations today were about 51 million metric tonnes annually in military is the United States largest single energy user, and it is 1% of total US emissions now to put that in context, this 51 million metric times larger than the annual admissions of many countries, combined were larger than we'll say Sweden any one year so that America scientists have also estimated the global military contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. The estimated 5.5% that the scientists for global responsibility, have suggested is that total burden of emissions from the mill Terry is not really on our radar at the global level, and that's why, activists and scientists are pushing to have full disclosure of all of those activities, but even then if we understood that scale of those emissions, we would still not be counting the emissions from more itself Yeah that is a significant but very difficult to estimate amount of CO2 nothing nitrous oxide that is coming from or itself and that's the mission that Leonard to Klerk the carbon footprinting expert began. He gathered a team of old colleagues analysed. The first 12 months of the fighting in Ukraine using open source intelligence scientific papers. An expert interviews he's pulled it all together in a new report that has been presented to the United Nations this month for the first 12 months of the war. We came to 120 million tonnes, U2 and just to give you an idea. What it means is the same amount that the country like Belgium emits in 12 months. Wow, that's quite significant because Belgium is an industrialised country, lots of people living here a high carbon lives. So this is more than many countries are emitting each year. Oh, Yes, absolutely. This is double of what's Portugal in its many times more than by the Baltic country in its it is significant. And how does that break down Leonard, 20% is caused by the warfare itself, the biggest part within water his fossil fuel So what's Thanks he was what sighted yet use warfare emissions come from the entire supply chain that goes into the manufacturing of equipment and weapons and as Leonard said the fuel needed for