Global alliance needed to win war on our environment
Do you think that you are actually engaged in a war?
For most of us, war may be something distant. Yet, if we reconsider war in the context of our environment, we might recognise, bitterly, that we are already in one.
This war is not about guns or tanks, but about the ecological crisis and climate change.
This war has no frontline, no uniforms, no ceasefires and no respect for borders. This war, ironically, is being created by our own actions.
Believe it or not, the scale of destruction from this environmental war rivals, and in many cases surpasses, that of conventional warfare. While the ecological and human toll of armed conflicts is widely condemned, the consequence of environmental crisis inflicted during ''peacetime'' is often ignored.
It is not easy to compare the environmental toll of war with the damage inflicted by our ongoing assault on nature. If we want to make the stakes clear, we need to put both in the same frame of reference.
One way to do that is by using a common unit of measurement — carbon emissions.
During the Vietnam War, the United States dropped about 7.5million tonnes of bombs, which is equivalent to the total tonnage deployed during World War 2. These bombs, along with the widespread use of defoliants such as Agent Orange, generated about 600million tonnes of CO2.
More recently, the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war has released about 230million tonnes of CO2 since its outbreak in 2022.
Such figures are staggering. Yet they appear almost negligible when placed alongside our annual global emissions, like an ant compared to an elephant.
Today, humanity emits about 40billion tonnes of CO2 every year, perhaps more than all these wars combined. Astonishingly, the carbon emissions released during the entire Vietnam War are now equivalent to less than one week of current global output.
If carbon emissions alone do not convince you, then perhaps the human toll will.
Consider this: the Vietnam War claimed more than 3million lives over two decades. The Russo-Ukrainian conflict has killed or wounded about 1million people to date.
This is a profound tragedy. Yet the casualties of climate change, though less visible, are no less devastating.
In 2022, a single summer heatwave resulted in the deaths of over 61,000 individuals across Europe within a few months.
Meanwhile, climate-intensified floods and storms take thousands of lives annually. The catastrophic 2022 floods in Pakistan, for example, killed over 1700 Pakistanis and devastated the lives of more than 33million others.
Perhaps the most dangerous killer is the air we breathe. Air pollution, driven mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, kills an estimated 7million people every year worldwide, according to a World Health Organisation report.
These annual fatalities are on par with the average yearly death toll during World War 2, the deadliest war in human history. World War 2 ended in 1945.
However, the environmental war continues silently and relentlessly, its victims often neglected.
Like passengers aboard a modern-day Noah's Ark, we, as humanity, rise or fall together. This planet is our only lifeboat for the foreseeable future. There is no alternative. On this ark, our destinies are bound together. Survival requires co-operation, not competition.
We need a global alliance — a coalition of individuals, businesses and states working in concert — to confront the escalating environmental crisis.
Individually, we should reconsider our lifestyles and consumption patterns to adopt more eco-friendly habits that support environmental sustainability.
Nationally, we must transition our economies to green energy and preserve the ecosystems that have nurtured us for thousands of years.
Internationally, we need to share knowledge and green technology across countries.
Victory will not be achieved by individual actors acting alone. Victory is possible only when we fight together to end the war on our environment.
- Manh Tuan Ngo is a master of international studies student at the University of Otago.
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NZ Herald
11 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Russia counters Ukrainian drones by turning off Russians' mobile internet
The goal is to try to thwart attacks by Ukrainian drones that analysts say have used mobile networks for navigation. It is a big disruption in a country where smartphones provide the only online access for millions of people. The Government regularly touts an array of online services, including filing tax returns and applying for jobs, and President Vladimir Putin claimed this year that Russia was 'a step ahead of many other nations'. Even so, 'they can turn off the internet', said Katya, 32. She described how the Government had encouraged reliance on apps and web services — and then exercised control over internet access — as a 'digital gulag'. Like others interviewed, she asked to be identified only by her first name out of fear for her safety. She and her partner made it home from their recent weekend getaway, after struggling with a partially downloaded map and phoning her partner's mother to top up their debit card to pay for fuel. The Russian Government has a record of restricting online freedoms, including trying to block the country's most popular messaging app and throttling YouTube. But the mobile internet shutdowns are the collateral damage of war, a response to Ukraine's spectacular drone attacks on long-range bombers at Russian bases on June 1. Cellphones use parallel mobile networks, one for calls and another for the data used by phone apps — or drones. The internet blackouts shut down the data network but calls still go through. Wireless connections, which do not depend on mobile networks, can allow phones to stay online. Day-to-day orders to shut down the mobile internet come from regional officials responding to reported drone intrusions, rather than from Moscow, according to documents viewed by the New York Times. The Russian Communications Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 'The Kremlin has been asking regional authorities to put up a defence against the drones — there's nothing else they can do but turn the internet off,' said Mikhail Klimarev, head of the Internet Protection Society, an exiled Russian digital rights group. The threat of drones also regularly shuts down Russian airports for hours. About 300 flights were cancelled in Moscow in one weekend alone. By late this month, the cellular internet was down every day, for at least a few hours, in some part of at least 73 of Russia's 83 regions, according to a tally by Na Svyazi, a group of volunteers living abroad that monitors internet access in Russia. Yelena, who lives in Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, said that her daughter commuted to and from school by bus, paying her way with a transport card, but that the system didn't work during an outage. A few times, Yelena said, she has had to wire the fare to the bus driver's phone. Russians first experienced such shutdowns in the early months of the war, but they were limited to the areas bordering Ukraine. This year, authorities switched off mobile internet in Moscow for a few days before the annual Victory Day parade in May, a major event for Putin, who was hosting several world leaders, including China's leader, Xi Jinping. That outage exposed Muscovites' reliance on apps for contactless payments, taxis, car sharing, food delivery, and shopping, but discontent was fairly muted. 'The regions used to be wary of potential public repercussions and had not resorted to such shutdowns,' Sarkis Darbinian, a Russian lawyer and internet expert who lives in exile, told the New York Times. The lack of protests in Moscow gave regional authorities the signal that 'you can just turn the internet off' without causing a backlash, he said. A Ukrainian drone pilot in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine in April. Photo / Tyler Hicks, the New York Times After the Ukrainian attacks on June 1, the shutdowns began to afflict the vast breadth of the country. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, blamed the inconveniences around the Victory Day parade on 'a dangerous neighbour', an apparent reference to Ukraine. When he was pressed recently about more widespread shutdowns, he said: 'Everything that's linked to ensuring public safety is justified'. Internet blackouts have hit e-commerce companies and consumers most directly, although the scale of the economic impact is unclear. They have also hampered businesses not usually associated with phone apps. In the northwestern city of Pskov, a municipally owned heating company complained last month that it had not been able to finish repairs on a pipeline on time because of the outages. The internet shutdowns have become so frequent and widespread that they have given rise to online memes and songs. In Rostov-on-Don, Pavel Osipyan, a media personality, released a music video making light of the inconveniences. 'How can you tell you're from Rostov without saying it?' he rapped. 'Show me one bar for the internet.' In Izhevsk, a city known for weapons production about 1290km from Ukraine, mobile internet has often been turned off since June 1. Arina, 23, said residents there had been calling emergency services, looking for an explanation, only to be told that it was a safety measure and that they should be patient. The precautions do not always work. In the middle of one shutdown, Ukrainian drones hit a factory in Izhevsk that makes surface-to-air missiles, killing three people and injuring scores more. No air-raid alert was issued while mobile internet was down, leaving locals unsure what was happening. Another day, Arina was at home when she said she heard an air-raid siren. She had no idea what was going on: No one could post from the scene. 'The Government keeps mum or says everything is fine, but everyone can see things are not fine,' she said. Yekaterina Mizulina, head of the pro-Kremlin League for a Safe Internet, asked on social media this month why 'the internet is being throttled, and the drones keep coming and coming'. Many people affected by the blackouts speak of resignation. Neighbours and friends are annoyed but seem to be taking the disruptions as a new norm. In the courthouses where Sofia, a law student from the southern city of Krasnodar, spends her afternoons, lawyers, their clients and families often chat about the outages, but their reaction tends to be that the shutdowns are just one more burden. 'They just laugh it off,' she said. Regions from Tula in the southwest to Omsk in Siberia have said recently that they will introduce public wireless internet to allow residents to stay online when mobile networks go down. Shutdowns have reached the easternmost parts of Russia, which have not been hit by drones, prompting some to question the official rationale. Artyom, a remote technology worker from Khabarovsk, 25km from the Chinese border, expressed concern that the blackouts could be a part of the Kremlin's strategy to restrict information. He called it 'a very convenient lie' to blame the drone threat. 'Drones don't make it to Khabarovsk,' he said. 'I don't see any connection here.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Nataliya Vasilyeva and Alina Lobzina Photographs by: Maxar Technologies, Tyler Hicks ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
NZ Herald
20 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Trump warns Russia: End Ukraine war in 12 days or face sanctions
'I really felt it was going to end. But every time I think it's going to end he kills people. 'I'm not so interested in talking [to him] anymore,' he added. Ukraine swiftly praised the US President's stand and thanked Trump for 'standing firm and delivering a clear message of peace through strength'. 'When America leads with strength, others think twice,' Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak said on social media. The comments came after Trump and Starmer held a bilateral meeting that focused on ending the suffering in Gaza and reviving stalled ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas. Trump announced the US would set up walk-in 'food centres' in Gaza. Golf diplomacy 'We're going to be getting some good strong food, we can save a lot of people. I mean, some of those kids - that's real starvation stuff,' he said. Starmer, under domestic pressure to follow France's lead and recognise a Palestinian state, called the situation unfolding in Gaza an 'absolute catastrophe'. The pair also discussed the implementation of a UK-US trade deal that was signed on May 8 that lowered tariffs for certain UK exports but has yet to come into force. Trump hosted Starmer and his wife Victoria under tight security at Turnberry, where he had spent two days playing golf since landing in Scotland on Friday night for a five-day visit. Their talks came after the United States and the European Union reached a landmark deal to avert a full-blown trade war over tariffs, when EU chief Ursula von der Leyen visited Trump at the resort on Sunday. Trump hinted that he would not impose heavy tariffs on British pharmaceuticals. 'We certainly feel a lot better with your country working on pharmaceuticals for America than some of the other countries,' he told Starmer. 'With the relationship we have, you would not use that as a cudgel. You wouldn't be using it as a block,' he added. Trump set out early in his second term to fulfil a decades-long desire of reshaping US trade with the world, with his administration predicting his aggressive strategy of punitive tariffs could bring '90 deals in 90 days'. After months with very little to show, he is now enjoying some success, landing accords with Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and, most importantly, the European Union. The deals are expected to kick in August 1 to replace the current tariff regime these economies face, a White House spokesperson told AFP. After their meeting, Trump and Starmer were to travel to Aberdeen in Scotland's northeast, where the US President is to open a new golf course at his resort on Tuesday. Trump played golf at Turnberry on Saturday and Sunday on a five-day visit that has mixed leisure with diplomacy, and also further blurred the lines between the presidency and his business interests. – Agence France-Presse
NZ Herald
3 days ago
- NZ Herald
Russia-Ukraine war: The Kiwi troops training Ukraine soldiers
The New Zealand soldiers lined up in formation, legs akimbo, clad in camouflage and thumbed their chests. 'Ah ka mate, ka mate, ka ora, ka ora', or 'it is life, it is life, it is death, it is death'. The haka, made famous by the All Blacks, is a war dance, and you slap your chest to indicate that you will live and point at your enemy to let him know he will die. It was being done to greet a series of visiting dignitaries. The crack of rifle fire echoed over Salisbury Plain and, in the background, we could hear the whirr of helicopter blades as a large, dark green military helicopter carrying the Defence Ministers of New Zealand and the United Kingdom landed. I was proud to see my country doing its part. Here, about 130 Kiwis had been training greenhorn Ukrainian troops in the basics of combat. My countrymen were impressed. Nathan, one trainer, said the Ukrainians were far more impressive than the Afghans or Iraqis he had trained on previous missions. 'They're really hungry to learn; they have a passion and a thirst for knowledge.' Between breaks, the recruits would come to the instructors and bombard them with questions and demand explanations and extra rehearsals of what they had been learning. Nathan said it was astonishing that 'we haven't had people pulling sickies or trying to get out of the field. They hate it if they have to leave for some medical thing. Whereas back home, if things are going hard, you might get up and say, 'Oh, I'm feeling sick today.'' The Dogs of Mariupol by Tom Mutch, published by Biteback Publishing, is out now. After Ukraine's stunning successes in Kharkiv and Kherson, many in the West had finally come around to the possibility of Ukraine not just keeping itself alive but even winning back territory, possibly kicking the Russians out of the territory they had stolen in 2014. There was one military objective over all others. The only real prize the Russians had captured – outside some ruined husks of cities in the Donbas – was the land bridge to occupied Crimea via southern Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts. An attack here could potentially cut off the Kremlin's access to Crimea. Ben Wallace, then UK Secretary of Defence, was about as gung-ho as it gets about Ukraine's chances. He said that, in weekly conversations with his Ukrainian counterparts, he'd urged them to 'keep up the pressure'. The Ukrainians were taking an operational pause, but he seemed to think this was unwise. 'Given the advantage the Ukrainians have in equipment training and quality of their personnel against the demoralised, poorly trained, poorly equipped Russians, it would be in Ukraine's interest to maintain momentum through the winter. They have 300,000 pieces of arctic warfare kit, from the international community.' The British had always been the most bullish about Ukraine's chances. The US, by contrast, was beginning to show a note of caution. Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said that Ukraine should consider negotiating, now that it was in its strongest battlefield position yet. The training, praised for its intensity, aims to enhance Ukraine's capabilities against Russian forces. Photo / Tom Mutch Vitaliy Krasovskiy, Ukraine's defence attache in London, who worked on liaising with foreign militaries, was full of praise for his British counterparts, saying that British commitment went 'well above' that of most other countries. He noted that officials at the UK's Ministry of Defence were 'extraordinarily committed', regularly working overtime and at weekends at key points of the military campaign. 'If our armed forces need a particular vehicle or piece of weaponry, the Brits will search through the military catalogues of different countries and find what we need,' he added, citing the Australian Bushmaster armoured vehicle as an example. The difference, he explained, was that, while the US saw Ukrainian success as in their own interests, the Brits had a passionate emotional attachment to a full Ukrainian victory. He also mentioned former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's early and regular trips to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as an important factor in boosting Ukrainian morale and demonstrating international support. While Johnson is mostly disgraced at home, he remains a folk hero in Ukraine, appearing on murals, T-shirts, coffee mugs and beer cans. Despite the professionalism of the Western trainers, and the thoroughness of their instruction, they privately admit there is a gaping hole in their ability to teach. 'Quite frankly, we've never fought this kind of war before,' one instructor said. Kiwi photojournalist Tom Mutch. Western militaries' combat experience in recent decades has been fighting counter-insurgency battles against the Taliban in Afghanistan. But this was a war being fought largely through massive artillery barrages from a powerful state military, which most Western soldiers have never faced. One trainer told me: 'They are practising artillery on the light-fire range at the moment, and we do fire manoeuvre ranges as well as battle simulation. We'll have loud bangs that simulate artillery. We have exercises where we bring in amputees and dress them to make it look like that amputation was caused by artillery and make the recruits responsible for treating that individual.' He is confident that, despite the short training time, 'after five weeks, they come out combat capable. They can shoot straight, communicate and medicate.' There were already some grumblings that not all of the preparations were going right. One of the Ukrainian soldiers on the base complained that, when they were on the battlefield, reconnaissance drones were the big new thing, and so learning to navigate through binoculars and maps seemed completely anachronistic. Cutting the land bridge was a daunting prospect, with considerably different battlefield contradictions from either Kherson or Kharkiv. Kherson had been a particularly tough nut to crack. Ukraine was fighting well-trained Russian airborne troops, who were well dug in and took heavy casualties at first. It took months to make a breakthrough – and that was only because the Russians had their backs to the river. A helicopter bringing in a ministerial delegation about to land in the training camp. Photo / Tom Mutch Russians had mobilised 300,000 additional troops, and while the process had been bedraggled and chaotic, bringing in a lot of low-quality troops, it allowed them to plug the gaping holes in their front line. This situation would not be replicated in Zaporizhzhia. Russian General Sergey Surovikin had invested huge amounts of work in building an extensive fortifications network stretching across Zaporizhzhia, where the Ukrainian Army was expected to come from. To make matters worse, the outlines of the Ukrainian plans were leaked to the Russians months in advance, so they knew exactly where, and close to when, Ukraine would attack. Labour MP Peeni Henare and Ben Wallace, former UK Defence secretary, in Salisbury plains. Photo / Tom Mutch To counter the Russian advantages, the Ukrainians and their supporters in the West embarked on a campaign to get Ukraine an extraordinary number of armoured vehicles and the latest Western tanks, along with F-16 fighter jets and long-range missiles like the Army Tactical Missile System. The exact process of what was delivered when is a complicated and dull affair, but suffice to say that the timelines were far too slow. There was a large delay caused by the international effort to convince Germany to allow the transfer of Leopard tanks to Ukraine. But there were larger strategic errors as well. The Russians had begun ramping up their industrial production for artillery shells and drones and importing extra weapons from North Korea and Iran. It was reasonable to think that Ukraine could establish an advantage in artillery fire, and the risk of a Russian counteroffensive was low. Western support, which has been essential to Ukraine's war effort, was also likely to peak in summer 2023. The US was burning through its stockpile of ammunition, while European states had failed to ramp up munitions production in 2022 and were just beginning to make the required investments, with lacklustre results. With elections looming in 2024, the political headwinds in Western capitals also suggested that funding to support Ukraine would decline after this operation. The US borrowed ammunition from South Korea, and other Western countries made efforts to contribute as part of a crash train-and-equip programme for Ukrainian forces. All told, the West trained and equipped nine brigades for the offensive. Ukraine would field several additional brigades from the armed forces and National Guard, organised under two corps, and a reserve task force. Tom Mutch is a war correspondent who became embedded in Ukraine just before Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashed his military might on the country in 2022. He has written countless articles for the Herald through a Kiwi lens. He went on to cover the war in Gaza. Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
