Climate Change and You: The US-Israel attack on Iran is pushing the world towards climate catastrophe

Climate Change and You is a fortnightly newsletter written by Bibek Bhattacharya and Sayantan Bera. Subscribe to the newsletter to get it directly in your inbox.

Dear reader,

If there is any silver lining at all to US and Israel’s war on Iran, it is that the global cost of an oil war may persuade countries to once and for all reject fossil fuels for renewable energy. If oil and gas are precious and scarce resources that routinely generate destabilizing wars, well, nobody can fight a war over sunlight, can they?

As the climate crisis intensifies and the planet gradually loses its capacity to sustain the current global economy, we will certainly see wars fought over water or critical minerals. But with the demise of our dependence on fossil fuels, one big cause for global warfare will end. According to a 2013 study published by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, between 1973 and 2012, 25-50% of all international wars and conflicts have been connected to oil interests.

Meanwhile, the two wars currently underway have added a huge amount of planet-heating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the atmosphere. By February 2025, the third anniversary of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, 230 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) of emissions had been released in the atmosphere—same as the annual emissions of Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Hungary combined. By February, this had climbed to 311MtCO2e, about the same as France’s annual CO2 emissions. The damage includes the use of fossil fuel-guzzling tanks and other forms of war machinery, damage to energy infrastructure and landscape fires.

Meanwhile, just the first two weeks of US and Israel’s attack on Iran have resulted in 5 million tonnes of GHG emissions, not to mention the terrible environmental harm caused by attacks on fossil fuel infrastructure like refineries, ships and military bases, as well as civilian areas. The intensity of this war is depleting the world’s remaining carbon budget (i.e., the amount of fossil fuels countries can burn while still having a chance to limit warming to less than catastrophic levels). Analysis shows that the war on Iran is draining the budget faster than the combined emissions of 84 countries.

This is clearly an inflection point in the struggle against the climate crisis and the vested interests that are causing it.

STATE OF THE CLIMATE

Earth’s energy imbalance

For as long as there have been humans—and not just homo sapiens—the Earh’s climate has been stable and mostly clement. And the reason for that is a simple one: the rate at which the planet absorbs heat from the sun has been the same as the rate at which it radiates heat back into space. This balancing out of energy has been thrown severely out of whack by ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions due to our burning oil, coal and gas for our energy needs.

This was the main headline of the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) annual State of the Global Climate report that was released on 23 March. Scientists began measuring this metric in 1960, and it has served as the basis for many studies on climate change. The report found that this imbalance is the highest it has ever been since records began. This imbalance is bound to increase in tandem with the increasing concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere—a record 423.9ppm (parts per million in 2024—that is trapping heat instead of radiating back into space. The Earth has not experienced such amounts of planet-heating emissions in at least 800,000 years.

Climate analysts say that the Earth’s energy imbalance presents a much better way to measure the effects of global warming. Rising atmospheric heat makes all the headlines, but as the report shows, we are still only feeling the effects of just 1% of the excess trapped energy in the atmosphere. Almost 91% of that heat has actually been absorbed by the global ocean, which is now triggering deadly summer heatwaves, leading to the death of coral reefs and supercharging cyclones.

THE NEWS IN BRIEF

-A few days ago, India updated its climate mitigation goals for the years 2031-2035. Also called NDCs or ‘nationally determined contributions’ under the global UN-led climate mitigation effort, read here what India has promised.

-India’s new NDCs have been called cautious and unambitious. However, this opinion piece in Mint by Shishir Priyadarshi, a former director at the WTO, argues that it instead represents a balanced approach that other countries would do well to emulate.

-While India is pursuing 500GW of installed electricity capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030, it is also seeking to add about 97,000MW of new coal and lignite capacity to meet 2034-2035 electricity demand.

CLIMATE CHANGE TRACKER

Climate impacts kill the poor more

When climate impacts hit, especially deadly heat, it is the citizens of poorer countries who die first, new research has found. The study, which is the first report in a series on climate adaptation from the Climate Impact Lab at the University of Chicago, analyses the extent to which countries need to plan for adapting to climate extremes. Connecting that question directly to preserving human health and the inequality of climate change, the study is based on some stunning projections of heat-related mortality.

According to the Climate Impact Lab’s analysis, climate change will increase premature deaths from heatwaves by over 90% by 2050. The kicker? This will primarily affect low- and middle-income countries. The report uses hyperlocal data to arrive at these projections, and they are certainly not pretty. A warmer climate will lead to more deaths due to extreme heat, with North Africa, West Asia and Southwest Asia suffering between 25 to 60 deaths per 100,000 people (compared to the 2001-2010 average).

Countries like Burkina Faso and Pakistan are slated to be among the worst hit, with 60 and 51 additional deaths for those countries respectively. India is especially vulnerable, with parts of northwest, west and central India lying well within the danger zone for rising deaths as heat intensifies.

PRIME NUMBER

10

A new study has quantified just how much damage the US's fossil-fuel-guzzling economy has caused the world. The answer is $10 trillion. And that’s just since 1990. This is the amount arrived at in research published in the journal Nature titled, Quantifying climate loss and damage consistent with a social cost of carbon. In this study, researchers have attempted to put a number on the concept of loss and damage inflicted by the world’s major carbon producers on countries that have emitted far less but are suffering the most due to global warming.

Nearly 25% of this ‘GDP-dampening’ has stymied the US economy as well. Among the biggest victims of these damages, $500 billion in economic damage has been inflicted on India, with another $330 billion on Brazil.

At every international meeting, developing countries have demanded that developed economies like the US—the largest historical emitter—pay for this loss and damage. So far, developed countries have pretended to lend a sympathetic ear and have done nothing. US has stopped even paying much lip service, and under US President Donald Trump has re-embraced oil and gas with a rapacious vengeance.

And that’s it from me this week, dear reader. Sayantan will be back in a fortnight with the next edition of Climate Change & You.