this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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A more closely integrated military would actually be good for the environment, eliminating redundancies would lower emissions, and shared R&D would accelerate the development of more climate friendly technologies, with the knock-on effect of augmenting civilian research as well.
Genuinely can't tell if you're taking the piss or not..
Saying a more closely integrated military would be good for the environment is like saying electric bomber planes would be better because their per bomb CO2 emissions would be lower....
I couldn't be more of a pacifist, but the fact is that there is a conquering imperialist power with the stated intention of undoing the European experiment right next to us, and we can't afford to not have a military capable of guarding against that. That means we do need to spend money, work, and yes, emissions on that. It sucks, we could spend all that on much more positive goals.
And yes, if we are going to build hundreds to thousands of tanks, let's figure out how to build them together to one standard so that we don't have to support a logistics nightmare to keep that afloat. Or if we take R&D, what if we could come together and get the FCAS thing going, so we don't need to fly hundreds to thousands of jets, flying and fuelling a smaller number of more advanced planes instead.
And it is actually what you are saying, we have to operate on the assumption that Russia will park thousands of tanks on our borders and start rolling in. That means we will have to, and we will drop thousands of bombs on them. The question is, what will preparing for that cost in terms of for example emissions, and how many people will die until we can. If we don't prepare as if this is real in a decade, maybe sooner, then it will definitely be real.
If you want to argue this, go, be my guest, buy a ticket to Moscow, and try to tell Putin why this is going to be bad for all of us and the planet. I doubt you will be able to convince him.
You talk about geopolitical futures with a definitive certainty that is impossible to get in any discipline. Oh wait, there is one, it's called climate science and you ignore completely how we blow up our civilization at the moment. We are currently the ones blowing it up, not (just) Putin. When we get shortages of food and repeated droughts, fires and floods, it is our fault. Don't you dare point toward Putin for this failure.
Take a long look in the mirror. The European experiment is gobbling up the ressources of three Earths and rising, we are hit most by temperature changes and we might turn off our gulf stream heating in the next decades. The European experiment is a climate experiment that leaves the stable basis of the last 10000 years for good soon.
Pointing to external threats to unite behind empty nationalist ideology is an old diversion tactic and it's going to bite us in the ass. People vote more and more for reality-denying far right parties because everything seems more important than to secure our future sustainably. Arming up is a symptom of shortages and apocalypse, not of civilization.
I don't think we're in the ressource fight apocalypse yet and we should do everything to avoid getting there, starting with stopping the use of fossil fuels immediately. How can we convince anyone of stopping the cycle of death if we are the ones most guilty?