BRUSSELS — NATO faces a series of dilemmas in its attempts to fight climate change while ensuring the effectiveness of its combat forces, as Europe’s biggest land war in decades ravages Ukraine, the head of the military alliance told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday.
The world’s armed forces are among the greatest consumers of hydrocarbons – fuel and oil – that contribute to greenhouse gases. They have been in much demand recently as global warming fans conflicts and crises because of resource and food scarcity.
The main dilemma NATO is contending with, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, is the difficult choice “between either having a green or a strong military.”
He said that NATO needs to “reconcile the need for an effective, strong, armed forces with the need to have climate-friendly armed forces.”
Last year, in its new Strategic Concept – essentially NATO’s mission statement – the world’s biggest security organization recognized, for the first time, climate change as “a defining challenge of our time, with a profound impact on Allied security.”
The document acknowledged that the 31-nation alliance’s “infrastructure, assets and bases are vulnerable to its effects.” It warned that NATO armies are being forced to operate in more extreme climate conditions and are increasingly called upon to take part in disaster relief operations.
“Climate change is a crisis…
