Climate Changing Conflicts [Amprenta Climatică A Beligeranţei]

The mental cohabitation of environmental anguishes alongside the anxieties of belligerence is the product of the Cold War era’s madness (as in MAD – mutual assured destruction). A doctrine of deterrence, MAD highlights the fact that every nuclear confrontation between superpowers can only end with the annihilation of both, regardless of who was at first on the offense and who was on the defence. Such an infamous possibility also had a climate-related dimension. Either the thermonuclear explosions will broil Earth’s fluids like a boiler (“Heat Death”), or they would release a cloud of particles in the atmosphere, blocking the solar radiation (“Ice Age”). The horrific result would therefore be a residual human-inhabited area oscillating agonizingly between scalding and drowning, between frostbite and starvation. Even though peaceful industrial rivalry, as benign market competition, is the main target of the blame for devouring the environment and disrupting the climate, modern / contemporary warfare’s environmental / climate footprint has all the makings of a tempting research subject.