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00:00It's not just about what Israel is doing in Gaza or the US is doing in Iran.
00:07It's not just about that.
00:09It's just about for the developing countries,
00:14for the most vulnerable nations among the developing ones that is needed
00:18just to keep the war machine running.
00:25Right now you must count ammunition, tanks, jets, submarines, soldiers, foot on ground.
00:38Why are you counting carbon?
00:40Nobody wants to tell you about this.
00:42The US military is the single largest institutional consumer of hydrocarbons on the planet.
00:46Wars produce emissions and emissions destabilize the climate.
00:55And when climates are destabilized, entire populations suffer.
00:59We already are suffering.
01:00There is a definite impact on quality of life, on the medical bills, even on GDP.
01:07The impact is already there.
01:09The impact even has been quantified.
01:11Therefore, human beings will continue fighting because this must be kept a secret.
01:17This must be kept almost sacred.
01:21Wars entertain, don't they?
01:23Humanity has traditionally done nothing else to do.
01:26Go and fight.
01:36Namaste Charaji.
01:38Charaji was going through the article that you have written for the Pioneer this week.
01:44It's titled The Climate Cost of the War Machine.
01:47Written in the context of the ongoing war.
01:50Some of the facts that I read in the article, they were quite shocking for me.
01:56So, I just wanted to discuss with you.
01:58You're welcome.
01:59Regarding some of the main points that I thought I wanted more clarity on.
02:04In the beginning itself it says,
02:06The world's militaries combined account for an estimated 5.5% of global greenhouse emissions.
02:13That is nearly three times as much as the world's commercial flights emit.
02:18It's just close to 2%.
02:20And it never beeps on our radars.
02:26Never.
02:27We keep talking of air travel, often in a denigrating way.
02:35And we'll poke fun and throw taunts at someone who chooses to fly to Europe for a vacation.
02:45And it is astounding that the world's war machines are emitting three times as much carbon as the entire commercial
03:08aviation.
03:10That whole industry combined.
03:14And it never, never occurs to us.
03:17You know, there is a reason it never occurs to us.
03:20In 1997, when the Kyoto negotiations were on, the US lobbied hard to exclude the military emissions from the account
03:35of total national emissions.
03:37And since that day, the world has decided in a fit of collective amnesia to look the other way.
03:55So we account for everything except the elephant in the room, which is military emissions.
04:05And you have begun in a great way by putting a number to that.
04:12Three times as much as the global aviation industry.
04:19And even this number is probably underreported.
04:21Underreported.
04:22Because there is no legal mandate to compulsorily or accurately report.
04:30So reporting is either not done or even if it's done voluntarily, there exists no mechanism to cross-check what
04:44the nations are reporting as their military carbon emissions.
04:48Mostly it is not even reported.
04:51It says if the world's military is combined were a country.
04:56Fourth.
04:57It would be the fourth largest emitter.
04:58Fourth largest emitter behind the US and China.
05:02China and India.
05:03So that's the size of the emission.
05:08China and the world's population are given an egoic pill that helps them forget or ignore how much the war
05:25machines are emitting.
05:28And you know, the war machines are emitting not only in wartime, what you call as peacetime, what you call
05:37as the normal maintenance operations of the global militaries.
05:44They are not insignificant at all.
05:49So even if you do not find a war raging, the extent of emissions in terms of the production of
06:06weaponry, the logistics, the shipping, the usual drills,
06:12the movement of military aircraft and just so much more, that too is highly, highly significant.
06:23In fact, the global corpus that is needed to offset the effects of climate change for the developing countries, for
06:44the most vulnerable nations among the developing ones,
06:47that is just a fraction of the amount that is needed just to keep the war machine running.
06:59Not fight a war.
07:00Fighting a war is an entirely different proposition.
07:02In the usual maintenance sense, I suppose 15% of how much the militaries consume is enough to take care
07:23of the climate funding needs of the developing world.
07:27But all that is never, never talked of.
07:30We just keep mentioning that we need to take care of our goals under the Paris Agreement.
07:38But funding is a problem.
07:40Is funding really a problem?
07:43Or is the collective ego choosing to look the other way?
07:49We don't address that.
07:50And we take these, you know, as separate problems.
07:55Funds are not available to address our climate needs.
07:59There is poverty, schools are not there.
08:06And then there is geopolitical trouble and there are skirmishes on the borders.
08:14We take all these as separate problems.
08:19We keep them in separate boxes.
08:23And that serves a very nefarious inner purpose.
08:28You know what the purpose is?
08:30Keep all these problems in separate compartments so that you are exempted from looking at their common center, common source,
08:40common root, common origin.
08:42The fact is that the climate crisis and man's need for territorial expansion or geopolitical domination, they arise from the
08:58same inner place.
09:01The ego's appetite to consume is endless.
09:06From there come wars.
09:09And the ego can never be satisfied with whatever it has.
09:13From there comes the urge for hegemonic domination.
09:19And from there also comes the urge of the individual consumer to stuff his house with more wares, more this,
09:33more that, even more kids, more vacations, more vehicles, more emissions.
09:40So all of that is coming from the same center and that needs to be understood.
09:47The same point within the human being that causes him to mindlessly consume is also the point that causes him
10:02to mindlessly fight.
10:05The origin is the same.
10:06The origin is the same.
10:07The same.
10:07And that's, I said, the reason why we want to treat these as separate problems.
10:13Because if you look at them in totality, you will be forced to confront the fact that they are not
10:20separate problems.
10:21They are two branches of the same tree.
10:24You talked about looking away.
10:26So that's what I really found shocking.
10:29I mean the numbers, shocking as they are, were less shocking than the fact that I had never known about
10:34this.
10:34Yeah, because nobody wants to tell you about this.
10:37Yes.
10:37Because this must be kept a secret.
10:40This must be kept almost sacred.
10:44Yes.
10:45Not just secret, sacred.
10:47You are not supposed to touch the sacred, right?
10:50Yes.
10:50You are not supposed to question the sacred.
10:52Perfect.
10:53And that's why these things are not brought out in public.
10:56So that the ego's sacred idols are never put to question.
11:04War is one of them.
11:05I need to fight.
11:07Yes.
11:07It's a necessity.
11:08Yes.
11:08I need to feel secure.
11:11Really think these things leave you more secure.
11:15We know for sure the history of mankind is also the history of wars.
11:20Has all that left us more secure?
11:22We know it has not.
11:24Still the ego continues to lie to itself and tell itself that this is a present emergency.
11:32So you cannot waste your time in counting carbon.
11:37Right now you must count ammunition, tanks, planes, jets, frigates, submarines and men.
11:44You must count all these things.
11:46You must count the number of soldiers, the foot on ground.
11:50Why are you counting carbon?
11:52Carbon is a thing of the calendar.
11:56It is for tomorrow.
11:57Whereas we know very well that the climate crisis is a present emergency.
12:03It is not a thing of the future.
12:05But we want to pretend as if securing whatever we call as our needs is more important than
12:17securing the existence of mankind itself and the existence of the millions of species that
12:23we are causing to go extinct.
12:26Yes.
12:30Because when you talked about the sacredness of the thing, so called, I was just looking at the Kyoto Protocol
12:38you talked about.
12:39In 1997 the US pushed hard and lobbied so that this is excluded.
12:44Is that not very interesting?
12:46Very interesting.
12:47Yes.
12:47And that fact is rarely mentioned anywhere.
12:50It is not mentioned.
12:51And the surprising thing is in 1997 the US had a democratic government.
12:55The democrats were there who were supposedly pro-climate and they are the ones who lobbied for this.
13:03Even from climate action groups, we rarely get to hear of this.
13:08Nobody mentions the military operations, peacetime and wartime, as one of the most important and catastrophic sources of carbon emission.
13:23We take that as something non-negotiable.
13:28We take that as some kind of existential rule that cannot be questioned or sought to be changed.
13:43some kind of a secret decree that you cannot even dare to look at, let alone challenge.
13:55And the result of this not looking is, as you mentioned in the article, global military expenditure reached 2.7
14:03trillion.
14:03It is a 9.4 percent increase from the previous year.
14:06Right.
14:06Right.
14:07The steepest rise since the Cold War.
14:08It has to be understood that global military expense is very directly correlated to global carbon emission.
14:19And the Paris Agreement says that you have to reduce your carbon emissions by as much as 44% by
14:262030 compared to the levels when the agreement was signed.
14:32Now, if you have to achieve that kind of reduction, there has to be some kind of a corresponding reduction
14:42in the military spending as well.
14:43Instead, what we are experiencing, and you quoted, is the highest ever annual rise in military spending since Cold War.
14:54Yeah.
14:57That does not augur well.
14:59Not at all.
15:00Not at all.
15:02Not at all.
15:029%, 10% kind of global rise in military spending.
15:06And obviously, you will have justifications.
15:11Obviously, you will say this is a national need.
15:14You will say our very existence is threatened.
15:18The enemy will come and kill us.
15:20Therefore, we need to do all these things.
15:28The enemy may or may not kill us.
15:32But what's certain is that our insecurity will kill us.
15:36And that insecurity is a permanent feature of the unexamined ego.
15:41Don't examine the insecurity of the ego and the ego will keep labeling it as the truth.
15:48Yes, I am insecure and that's the truth.
15:50Therefore, I am entitled to proceed from my point of insecurity.
15:55All my actions are justified because, you know, I am actually insecure.
16:02Very interesting comparisons I saw in the article.
16:06It says, the US military is the single largest institutional consumer of hydrocarbons on the planet.
16:12If it were a country, it would be ahead of Portugal, Sweden, Denmark.
16:17The US military is the single largest consumer of hydrocarbons on the planet.
16:28And a lot of heft that the US enjoys as a superpower is because of its military.
16:38In other words, because of its military spending.
16:41In other words, because of its carbon emissions.
16:44So that's the world we are living in, right?
16:48The more you emit, the more you destroy, the bigger a superpower you are.
16:56Yes.
16:59And all that can change very soon because you don't have to do anything new.
17:06You don't have to scale mountains.
17:09Yes.
17:10You don't have to achieve feats.
17:12Yes.
17:12You simply have to stop emitting.
17:14Yes.
17:15Now, stopping something that you are already doing is far easier than accomplishing something new.
17:25So you simply have to pull the plug.
17:28You simply have to see the needlessness of what you are doing and withdraw, retreat.
17:38It's easy.
17:40But unfortunately, it's nowhere on the horizon.
17:44And mankind is slipping fast on this slope and actually accelerating.
17:55Yes.
17:56You mentioned the ego that launches a war and the ego that cannot stop burning carbon are not two different
18:02egos.
18:02Just the same.
18:03Same ego with the same problem.
18:04Just the same.
18:05Just the same.
18:06Just the same.
18:06I cannot know where my urge to have more comes from.
18:17I do not know why I feel like consuming more and more.
18:20I don't know why I feel like running to a shopping mall every weekend.
18:28I do not know why I must have more and more.
18:31Similarly, I do not know why I feel like committing somebody's territory or somebody's oil fields or somebody's farms, resources.
18:50I don't know anything.
18:51I just act on my urges.
18:53And my urges are not really mine.
18:56They belong to the ego.
18:58And the ego is some kind of a disease in the human being.
19:06Even if you are operating from your disease, obviously the operations can't be healthy.
19:13It's almost like getting infected with a virus.
19:16And the virus changes and controls your behavior.
19:22No, your behavior is not yours.
19:24Your behavior belongs to the virus.
19:27Your job now is not to obey the commands of the virus, but to remove it.
19:34And that's what a sane humanity and conscious civilization should be preferably doing.
19:44Instead, infected by the virus, we are busy carrying out the dictates of the virus.
19:53And the virus is the virus of incompletion.
19:59It says, give me more, give me more, give me more, give me more.
20:03And the entire planet will not suffice.
20:05Nothing is enough for the virus.
20:07And now we have come to a point when this is like a feedback loop.
20:12As your article mentioned, wars produce emissions.
20:16Emissions further accelerate climate change.
20:18Destabilizes the region.
20:19Wars produce emissions.
20:22And emissions destabilize the climate.
20:27And when climates are destabilized, entire populations suffer.
20:35Patterns of agricultural production get distorted.
20:41Displacement of populations can happen.
20:44And all that creates tension, which again lays the foundation for war.
20:53So, war will mean carbon emissions.
20:57Carbon emissions will mean climate catastrophe.
21:01And climate catastrophe will create tensions that will cause more wars.
21:05So, that's a feedback loop and a very unfortunate one at that.
21:10You know, just to put things in perspective.
21:16We keep talking of EVs.
21:20We keep talking of green energy and many such things.
21:24And it is good.
21:25Yes.
21:25We also keep talking of planting trees, which is all very fine.
21:30But do we want to have some kind of idea of the quantum of emissions that one fancy bomb produces?
21:47The kind we find dropped in movies and celebrate, provided it's being dropped on an enemy.
21:54That one bomb that is dropped on an enemy.
21:57The average kind.
21:58We are not talking of the big ones.
22:02The zar bomb and the fat boy types.
22:06We are not talking of those bombs.
22:07The normal, mediocre bomb.
22:11The everyday bomb.
22:13One such bomb produces emissions that are in the range of emissions produced by a car.
22:24If it travels for a distance of 1000, 2000 or 5000 kilometers, depends on the size of the bomb.
22:35I was going through this metric as well.
22:37And this is only regarding the explosion.
22:41If you include all the fuel of the jet plane and everything, it goes as large as 1.5 lakhs.
22:491.5 lakhs.
22:50Kilometers.
22:50So, you drive a car for 1.5 lakhs kilometers.
22:54And four times the circumference of the earth.
22:57Four times you go around the earth.
23:00And you'll still be emitting lesser than what you would if you drop a bomb on a built-up area.
23:15Because this construction, you know, this is locked in carbon.
23:19Yes.
23:20You flatten it and all that carbon is released back into the atmosphere.
23:25And after flattening it, you will rebuild, reconstruct and use iron and steel.
23:30And these are two industries that are extremely carbon intensive.
23:34So, one bomb that we often gloat over and even celebrate.
23:44One bomb is the equivalent of, taken comprehensively, a vehicle going around the planet four times.
23:57And then we say, you know, I'm a do-booter because I use EV.
24:02But at the same time, I vote for wars.
24:06At the same time, I support governments that are belligerent and promise more aggressive policies.
24:18And then I'm, you know, I'm climate conscious and I want to save the planet and do many good things.
24:29These are the questions somebody must ask the average American.
24:34What kind of inner hypocrisy is this?
24:41Obviously, there is a cross-section of the population that gives two hoots to the climate discourse.
24:47But then there are large numbers who claim that they care.
24:53Yes.
24:53So, this question must be posed to them.
24:55If you actually care, how are you supporting a government that fights or that seeks to enlarge the military or
25:04enhance the military spending?
25:07How do you support such a government?
25:09Do you not know what a fighter plane is made of and what it consumes or how a tank moves
25:19or what happens?
25:21When a single tank shell explodes, don't you know of these things?
25:28Do you still talk of climate?
25:32There are just so many aspects to it.
25:35Everywhere I look, here it mentions even about employment.
25:41Even if you look from that point of view, military spending produces an average of 5 jobs compared to 13
25:49in education, 9 in healthcare.
25:51You mentioned all this data in the article.
25:54Yes.
25:54So, we can keep that aside for a while because it's not so much about employment.
26:03People will say our urgent security needs must override the shape the employment figures have.
26:15So, that people won't want to really consider.
26:19But from a climate perspective, not just war, but the entire war machine is catastrophic.
26:30It's not just about what Israel is doing in Gaza or the US is doing in Iran or Russia is
26:43doing in Ukraine.
26:45It's not just about that.
26:46Even the existence of militaries is a huge threat to climate sustenance.
26:59But just as we love to feel insecure, similarly, the collective bodies of human beings love to feel insecure.
27:10That gives us an identity, a common enemy.
27:13You know, I am insecure and what connects you to me and how do I define myself as the enemy
27:23of my enemy.
27:25Yes, enemy of enemy.
27:26I got an identity, the enemy of my enemy.
27:34Do you get to read of, I mean the Iran war especially started.
27:41Yes.
27:41But you, Russia has been fighting Ukraine for four years now.
27:46Yes.
27:46Do you get to read of the climate impact of the Russia-Ukraine war?
27:51Yes, you mentioned that in the article.
27:54That has emitted carbon on a scale bigger than the annual carbon emissions of many important European nations, mid-sized
28:14European nations.
28:15Yes.
28:15Spain, and Austria-Hungary, Czech Republic, even if you combine all these small countries.
28:22Yes.
28:23It's more than war.
28:25But the war is never looked at from this perspective.
28:29Never.
28:31That's one of the major...
28:33And that's when we are still not talking of rebuilding.
28:37Yes.
28:38Ukraine has been flattened to a great degree.
28:42And reconstruction would mean even more carbon emissions.
28:49We are not yet talking of that.
28:55And all of these huge amounts that you are spending on the military, on wars,
29:04as you had mentioned, even a small fraction of this would easily solve a lot of issues that are happening
29:09in the developing countries.
29:11The thing is that wars are exciting.
29:14And what you are talking of is boring.
29:17A person in India watching TV and you know, saying...
29:22War, war is hot TV.
29:26War is good TV.
29:29War is successful TV.
29:31Yes.
29:32Yes.
29:34Climate...
29:37Makes you fall asleep.
29:39Yes.
29:42Therefore...
29:44Human beings will continue fighting because...
29:48It goes back again to the ego.
29:51The ego does not like itself.
29:53it's bored of itself therefore it is continuously in search of fun adventure excitement entertainment
30:01wars entertain don't they wars excite don't they though that's the worst kind of excitement yes
30:10one can opt for but that's what humanity has traditionally done nothing else to do go and
30:18fight wage a war seen the number of war movies we have and the blockbusters can you imagine
30:31a sane movie on the climate catastrophe
30:38reeking up even a tenth of the revenue
30:43that won't happen because wars are exciting yes and when there is that loud explosion
30:51you experience goosebumps no wow everything has been flattened and men are flying and buildings
30:58are collapsing in that moment in that moment of excitement in that moment of intoxication in that
31:05moment of drunkenness the ego gets what it has always desired
31:13a cool excuse
31:19to look more and more away from itself i'm looking at that because that is exciting
31:27i'm looking that way because that's where the enemy is
31:33what the ego hates is the mirror what the ego never wants to look at is itself
31:39give it something exciting so that it can continue to evade its own face that's all that it wants
31:46and war gives it gives the ego a good nice exciting object to look at
31:58humanity probably deserves
32:04to suffer because that's something we have brought on upon ourselves what i
32:12what i don't like is the climate injustice
32:18the poor usually don't have a big role in consumption
32:27or even in wars
32:31these are fads of the rich and the elite and the powerful
32:35but it's the poor who are going to suffer the most yes animals have no role at all
32:44but all non-human species
32:47are not just suffering they are being wiped out
32:51at a rapid rate from the face of the planet that's climate injustice
32:57do you care about forests or rivers or animals when you wage a war does that happen we don't even
33:05keep account of that yeah if somebody asks you how many animals got killed in world war ii
33:15you'll have trouble in getting a realistic estimate from somewhere
33:22but you will get the number of germans and chinese and and brits and russians and poles
33:30who suffered all that is available
33:37i was thinking how tragic it is for a person from india to say i support the us or i
33:45support russia
33:45he's going to be the one of the first victims him and the environment around him indians who are
33:50enjoying the global wars thinking that they are happening in somebody else's backyard
33:57are making a fool of themselves because because carbon does not honor national boundaries
34:08whatever carbon is being emitted when when oil fields are set ablaze and refineries are struck
34:16in iran or in other gulf countries all that emission is not going to stay there that becomes a part
34:23of our
34:24shared atmospheres and the indian subcontinent
34:29climate climate is one of the most probably the most vulnerable place when it comes to the climate
34:37crisis we are going to be the biggest sufferers we already are it is not a crisis of the future
34:44we already are suffering there is a definite impact on quality of life on the medical bills even on on
34:52gdp
34:52yes the impact is already there the impact even has been quantified we know of that but we don't
34:59want to talk of that we can already see all the anxiety around the lpg cylinder yes father called me
35:05and said get an induction cooker right and it's just mid-march not not even mid-march yet and yet
35:14we experience the temperatures yes people are already anxious thinking in the north of april may
35:22and june and june and it's going to be bad really really bad and when you will find birds
35:30collapsing on roads and daily wage laborers collapsing you probably won't realize that that has
35:39a lot to do with the wars that humanity has waged with its fancy toys
35:50so what should be the approach of someone who is not directly related to this for someone in a
35:57developing country we are doing it we are doing it and we'll have to stop doing it
36:02it's it's it's it's it's all arising from the center of uh ego within the human being
36:12what is it that kills the ego the mirror know where actions are coming from and the actor will change
36:26know the center of the fighter know the place the fight is originating from
36:36and the fighter might change the fighter might find that he's no more so you'll have to
36:46bring people to themselves you'll have to have more discussions like this one yes where we get to see
36:58what is it within us that refuses to confront the facts that weaves all kinds of narratives
37:08and fabrications and utter lies just so that it has so that it can evade the the naked truth
37:20so so that's what is needed nothing fancy nothing special you don't have to do anything extraordinary
37:27to arrest the climate crisis you simply have to stop being yourself
37:33you simply have to desist from doing more of what you have done so far
37:41and the way is self-knowledge there is no other way the article you are quoting from is
37:52built around that point though i have substantiated it with a lot of facts
38:00and that's necessary facts must be brought out but the center remains self-knowledge you have to see
38:10what within you makes you makes you fight your neighbor are the reasons real at all what within you prevents
38:24you
38:24from keeping an account of the real costs what within you makes you hide the
38:36the climate cost of your belligerence so that's something we need to confront you mentioned here
38:47that the government that refuses to account for military emissions did not arrive from nowhere they
38:51are elected by each one of us these are all elected governments yes obviously obviously both the
38:57governments that initiated the war are elected governments for namesake even in even in russia there
39:05is an elected government so even hitler yeah came to power through a democratic process
39:13so so so it's not as if an alien power is
39:23is hypnotizing us there is something within us that is dark and evil and we need to look at it
39:32the good news is looking often suffices if you know you are operating from a bad center
39:40the knowing changes something
39:43you
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