From Climate Scepticism

By MARK HODGSON

MPs confuse date – it isn’t the first of April

I have to thank the Guardian for bringing to my attention a story that might otherwise have passed me by:

MoD must act to tackle impact of climate crisis on UK forces, MPs say – Defence committee report says British military needs urgently to adapt over coming decades to be effective.

The Guardian’s report is so bizarre (though, for once, it seems to be an accurate report of ludicrous conclusions arrived at by someone else, rather than ludicrous exaggeration by the Guardian), that it justifies a closer look at the report itself. The Report in question is the eighth report of the House of Commons Defence Committee of the 2022-23 session, and bears the title “Defence and Climate Change”. Apparently the Government has two months in which to respond. If I were the Government, my response would be, shall we say, robust, but I hold out no hopes for the nature of the actual response.

The Report is divided into four main sections:

Context of the Inquiry

This sets the scene, and the tone is worrying from the very start. First of all it cites the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2023, which ranks what the WEF considers to be the top 32 most severe risks to the planet over the next ten years. One might have hoped that an independent committee of MPs would make its own assessment of such risks, but apparently not. Instead we are told, unquestioningly, that the WEF view forms the backdrop to the committee’s report. And how does the WEF view global risks over the two time frames set out?

Well, over two years, the cost-of living crisis is top of the list, but hard on its heels come natural disasters and extreme weather events; geoeconomic confrontation; failure to mitigate climate change; erosion of social cohesion and societal polarisation; large-scale environmental damage incidents; failure of climate change adaptation; widespread cybercrime and cyber insecurity; natural resource crises; and large-scale involuntary migration.

Over ten years the obeisance to “the climate crisis” intensifies. Starting with the most significant risk, the top ten reads as follows: failure to mitigate climate change; failure of climate-change adaptation; natural disasters and extreme weather events; biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse; large-scale involuntary migration; natural resource crises; erosion of social cohesion and societal polarisation; widespread cybercrime and cyber insecurity; geoeconomic confrontation; and large-scale environmental damage incidents.

It can be seen that the top ten threats remain the same, but the order has been shuffled, so that the “climate crisis” and all its ramifications are now front and centre. Needless to say the House of Commons Defence Committee seems to accept this analysis without demur.

Next we are reminded that in 2019 Parliament legislated (albeit by statutory instrument) for the 2050 net zero requirement. And, with particular reference to a foreign policy and defence perspective, the 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy identified tackling climate change and biodiversity loss as the Government’s number one international priority (yes, really). Someone in a position of authority seems to have woken up, as the Defence Committee report grudgingly concedes that this may be revised following the invasion of Ukraine.

The Committee examines the impact of climate change on the UK’s armed forces, and assesses the contribution of the defence sector in achieving the government’s legally binding obligation to achieve net zero by 2050. One might have thought that our armed forces – and the House of Commons Defence Committee – would have other priorities, but apparently not. We are even referred at this stage to Annex One of the Report. Annex One is pretty revealing. It talks about Greening Government Commitments 2021-2025, and from it we learn that the Government is investing a further £1.425 billion in the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, with the aim of reducing direct emissions from public sector buildings by 75% by 2037. That is an obligation that extends to the Ministry of Defence.

Still setting the scene, we next learn that the Ministry of Defence sets out its approach to combating climate change (sic) in its 2021 Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach. Yes, there really is such a thing. It identifies the MoD’s “strategic ambition” for 2050 across three strands: adaptation to be able to fight and win in ever more hostile and unforgiving physical environments; to act and be recognised as a global leader in response to the emerging geopolitical and conflict-related threats that are exacerbated by climate change (yes, really); and to have reduced its emissions and increased its sustainability activity and as a department is contributing to the achievement of the UK legal commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

It’s really only when reads this sort of thing, and appreciates the deep extent to which net zero is embedded in every aspect of government, that one understands the full extent of the damage it is causing. We will consider below, as we peruse the later sections of the report, to what extent the MoD has been forced to take its eye off the ball, and we will learn that the House of Commons Defence Committee is happy about this, in principle. Its report basically follows, with approval, the three strands of the MoD’s 2021 Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach.

The Committee launced its inquiry on 12^th May 2022. Its terms of reference are revealing. It asked four questions:

What needs to be done to achieve the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy’s number one international priority of meeting climate change and biodiversity loss commitments over the next decade?

What will be the impacts of climate change on future conflict and how are UK Armed Forces adapting to them?

Are UK Armed Forces prepared for the probable increase in requests for Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (MACA) tasks as a result of more extreme weather conditions in the UK, and the increased risk of flooding and rising sea levels?

With defence alone accounting for half of central government’s greenhouse gas emissions, what should be the MOD’s contribution towards achieving the UK’s net zero target by 2050?

Issue could easily be taken with the first three, but it’s the fourth that made me sit up and take notice. I had no idea that UK defence accounts for half of central government’s greenhouse gas emissions. If the government is serious about net zero, it’s not enough for it to cajole the rest of us, but it needs to be seen to be reducing its own emissions to net zero. And it plainly can’t do that unless the Ministry of Defence achieves this too. Hence, presumably, what strikes me as a ridiculous Defence Committee inquiry into “Defence and Climate Change”

I understand why quite a few of the witnesses appeared before the inquiry – various military types and people associated with the Ministry of Defence, most obviously. I am less clear why the Committee felt it necessary to hear from John Kerry and from David Beasley, Executive Director of the United Nations’ World Food Programme.

The climate change threat to global security and Defence’s response

I suppose it was inevitable that this section would commence with reference to the Paris Agreement, to the IPCC and to some fairly extreme predictions relating to climate change. Then John Kerry is quoted:

If we don’t respond adequately, I think we will see an undermining of the common principles around which we have organised our defence and security communities. They will be undermined in ways that will challenge why it is that we have not implemented the precautionary principle of governance, which is that when you see a threat coming and know that there are things that are existential, responsible people are supposed to respond. In much of the world today, there is not an adequate response to the cause …

Whatever that means. Who “we” are and what “our” response should be aren’t explained. The fact that the Committee felt it necessary to reproduce Mr Kerry’s banal and imprecise words is more than a little worrying. None of the MPs apparently thought to question what is meant by “we” in that quote, for instance. None of them seemingly thought to ask whether “we” can make any difference if China, Russia, India, and most of the developing world fail to act as Mr Kerry requires.

Then we get a section on maintaining effectiveness of the armed forces in the face of a changing climate. A couple of examples are given:

For example, military vehicles usually designed for temperatures up to 45°C have had to operate in Iraq and Afghanistan at well over 50°C. Lieutenant-General Nugee (retd), non-executive director for climate change and sustainability in the Ministry of Defence, explained that warships, which have traditionally used the cooling effect of the seas to ensure engines operate effectively are finding that the thermal blanketing effect of rising sea temperatures in the Persian Gulf is eroding the efficiency of existing naval engines.

At least the Committee had the sense with regard to the latter observation to comment wryly that “[i]t is surprising this was not factored into the engine specification issued by the Royal Navy or raised by the engine designers and manufacturers.”

Then we are treated to a Met Office prediction that rising temperatures will by 2040 make Cyprus a no-go area for troop training for a few months every year.

The Committee notes that the armed forces are already training in extreme environments:

…the Royal Marines specialise in providing mountain and cold-weather warfare training to the Commandos and other forces for deployment in Norway and the High North region. Similarly, the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) and the Jungle Warfare Division in Brunei deliver training to allow UK forces to operate in more inhospitable climatic conditions.

But despite that great level of training in extreme conditions, extremes might become yet more extreme, apparently.

And we have to be very worried about melting icecaps. For example, scientists predict that the Arctic will be open water in the summer within 15-20 years. It will be used as a route for international trade and also may be a vital source of critical minerals needed for “clean” [sic] energy technologies. However, the Russians may seek to restrict access. And between the winter ice and the summer ice-free Arctic, there is a period when ice-breakers aren’t needed, but the hulls of warships will be too thin to cope with the less thin ice. We need a fleet that can cope with these problems and also with the increasingly hot waters near the equator.

Adaptation extends beyond this to exploiting new technologies – modular nuclear reactors and electric and hybrid-drive vehicles are mentioned. Perhaps I am naïve, perhaps it’s the Committee members who are naïve, but I found this paragraph to be simply bizarre:

Defence could exploit these technologies, particularly on deployed operations and within overseas bases. For example, it has been estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 US personnel were killed or injured protecting resupply missions in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003–2007—convoys that could be dramatically reduced if deployed forces were able to use a range of solar, electric-drive and micro-nuclear technologies to generate and/or reduce their own hydrocarbon-fuelled power requirements.

That strikes me as close to fantasy-land for the foreseeable future, and far from saving the lives of military personnel, potentially endangers them.

We next learn of the MoD’s proposal to electrify its 15,000 non-military vehicles by 2027, i.e. in just over three years. Why the rush? Surely it makes sense to replace vehicles as and when they expire and require to be replaced, rather than proceed at great expense and without first undertaking satisfactory trials simply to meet an artificial target date?

Similarly, we learn that the RAF is looking at alternative fuels for its ‘yellow fleet’ refuelling vehicles. By 2025, the Army expects to complete hybrid electric drive experiments with technology retrofitted to a Support Vehicle truck, Foxhound and Jackal vehicles following a £9 million investment. At least these are only experiments, and I can accept that there might be something in the purported military benefit – silent surveillance capabilities without a noisy engine running. I am a little more sceptical about the other purported benefit – “increased on-board power for more complex electrical systems and to support dismounted operations.”

The above all seems a little surreal in the face of the next paragraphs of the report, which note that over the next few years the army is due to take delivery of more than 1,000 armoured vehicles with conventional diesel engines, many of which are expected to remain in service after the 2050 net zero date. Interestingly at this point the Committee report describes 2050 net zero as a target rather than as a legal obligation. In addition, it notes that the Royal Navy is in the final design stages for diesel-fuelled ships that will be built in the 2030s and remain in service until the 2080s.

MPs never seem to tire of issuing instructions to meet mutually incompatible targets. Just as Ofgem is told to decarbonise electricity generation while enhancing energy security and reducing costs to consumers, so the MoD is enjoined to “push hard to reduce carbon emissions from its equipment, without eroding military capability.”

It seems the MoD is happy to follow the instructions from its political masters (but see later in this article for a possible alternative view), for we are next told that:

James Clare, Director, Levelling Up, The Union, Climate Change and Sustainability at the Ministry of Defence, set out Defence’s underlying principle in terms of climate change and reducing carbon emissions, which is to:

contribute fully to the UK’s net zero commitment, while preserving our (military) capabilities.

It seems scarcely credible that someone should hold such a curious job title. This is how far down the net zero rabbit hole the MoD has fallen. At least the House of Commons Defence Committee seems to find such a job title to be less than appropriate – see later in this article.

Apparently, with regard to the MoD’s substantial estate, it has a plan (“Epochs”) involving an incremental approach to achieving net zero, over three time periods: 2021-2025; 2026-2035; and 2036-2050. In the first of those three periods the plan is to catalogue emissions and identify reduction targets, with a particular focus on the defence estate. Rather frighteningly (to those of us who care about the wild places) the MoD has access to around 1.8% of the UK land mass, it owns or controls 225,800 hectares, and has access rights to a further 206,700 hectares. In this respect the army (i.e. the UK taxpayer) has already “invested” (i.e. spent) £200 million in “Project Prometheus” with a view to trying to save 2,000 tCO2e (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) annually across four sites. This is the sort of thinking that now permeates the Ministry of Defence:

Lieutenant-General Wardlaw, Chief of Defence Logistics and Support, Ministry of Defence, stated that if 650 hectares—the size of Hyde Park—of solar farms were built it would represent something like 0.2% of the defence estate and service 15% of the Army’s energy needs through the summer. By that logic the equivalent of 100% of the Army’s energy needs during the summer could be met by putting solar panels on 1.3% of the defence estate.

No mention is made of what happens during the winter, or even during the summer on dull days.

The MoD spends around 12% of its budget on its estate, but as pressures on its budget have increased (one assumes that net zero projects like Prometheus have increased those pressures), funding allocated to the estate has reduced, to the point where much of its built estate is “… old, poor quality and expensive to run. Around 40% of its estate assets are more than 50 years old.” The built estate consists of around 96,000 buildings, providing around 100,000 bed spaces and 49,500 homes for personnel and their families. Unsurprisingly, satisfaction with the accommodation has fallen significantly over the past decade. The most recent Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey found that Service Family Accommodation satisfaction with the ‘responses to request for repairs’ fell from 46% in 2014 to 19% in 2023, and satisfaction with the ‘quality of that work’ fell from 40% to 19%. Levels of satisfaction with responses to, and quality of repair work, for Single Living Accommodation were 27% and 29%, in the most recent survey, respectively.

It’s something of a shambles, in other words. How do they propose to respond to those levels of dissatisfaction? By going for “carbon-saving” measures of course. They haven’t done anything about it yet, though – they propose looking at it later this year.

Another dubious conclusion has been arrived at too, namely that the war in Ukraine has brought to light in stark terms the vulnerability of infrastructure to physical and/or cyber-attack. They have thus decided that they would be less vulnerable and more resilient if they fit more low-carbon energy generating capacity across the MoD’s estate. Quite why that infrastructure would be less vulnerable than any other isn’t explained. Never mind, we are also told that the RAF already has a commitment to make its bases net zero by 2030. We aren’t told what this will cost or how it will be achieved.

This section next deals with the provision of military aid to civilian authorities (MACA). Extraordinarily, it asserts that “[f]looding is expected to be the most prominent climate change risk in the UK over the next five years.” This claim is made despite figures supplied by the MoD for MACA requests (figures which were accepted by the Committee) are said not to indicate any trend, though if anything they indicate a downward trend (194 in 2019; 606 in 2020; 320 in 2021; and 101in 2022). We are also told (without explanation – and one is needed, since at first blush the assertion makes no sense) that “the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic impacted considerably on the statistics.” The Committee expresses its concern that reducing numbers of personnel will be less able to cope with MACA tasks, with the result that the Government needs to be aware of this and should possibly increase non-forces capacity to respond to civil emergencies. All of which is common sense, but what is not common sense is the assertion that flooding incidents are likely to be the most prominent climate change risk in the next five years – especially given that the only evidence cited suggests declining numbers of MACA requests in recent years.

Defence as a global leader for tackling climate change

This is where the Report takes on a particularly surreal aspect. Lieutenant-General Nugee (retd), non-executive director for climate change and sustainability in the Ministry of Defence noted that “… perhaps the one that I feel most strongly about, is that Defence’s ambition is to be the global leader in understanding the security implications of climate change.” He went on to say:

The UK is often looked to as the thought leader in this area, and we need to ensure that we remain the thought leader. When the Pentagon—President Biden and the Defence Secretary—published their strategy at the beginning of last year, it quoted only four documents, one of which was ours. They have looked to us for some thought leadership, and other countries are looking to us for thought leadership … We need to be a global leader, and to lead the world in understanding what we can do about it.

Why it is important for the UK (as ever) to be a “global leader” in this area isn’t really explained at all, and certainly not to my satisfaction. It also sits a little uneasily with this paragraph from the Committee’s report:

The Ministry of Defence has a mixed picture regarding milestones and targets. The RAF has set itself a stretching target of a ‘Carbon Net Balanced Service by 2040’ — a decade ahead of the Government’s net zero target. Moreover, it has interim milestones — a net zero airbase by 2025 and a net zero estate by 2030, however it is unclear as to how they propose to achieve this without impacting on military capability. There is a mixed picture among other Top-Level Budget holders (TLBs) across Defence. Linsey Cottrell, Environmental Policy Officer, Conflict and Environment Observatory, told us that the Ministry of Defence as a whole did not have a 2050 net zero target and was not aware the Army had a net zero target either.

Not does the Royal Navy appear to have publicly disclosed a 2050 net zero target. Further, “Defence Equipment & Support have a net zero target across their operations and infrastructure by 2040, but for ‘capabilities’ (i.e. building military equipment) it is only committed to ‘ … reduc(ing) the carbon footprint of the capabilities we deliver and support by 2050.’

NATO (who we apparently seek to influence as part of our “global leadership” role) has recently announced a cut in headquarters emissions of at least 45% by 2030, and net zero by 2050, but has not set out the methodology by which this will be achieved. Similarly, the IPCC has yet to publish any estimates of military greenhouse gas emissions. Likewise, the National Inventory Reports compiled through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change do not report emissions arising from military fuel use and other military activities in a transparent, consistent and robust format.

At this point, the Report seems to lose all semblance of understanding regarding the need for confidentiality and secrecy regarding the activities of the UK’s armed forces (albeit it seems that other countries understand the importance of this with regard to their own armed forces all too well). The MoD is publishing more information than most other countries, such as, for example, information on military fuel use (yes, really). China, Russia, North Korea et al must be laughing their socks off.

In para 61 the Committee recommends:

The Ministry of Defence should work with other UK government partners to encourage the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to update their reporting framework so emissions from military fuel use and other activities are set out in National Inventory Reports. The Ministry of Defence should also urge NATO to increase its transparency and publish its methodology for accounting for greenhouse gas emissions.

Words fail me.

The report next moves from being barking mad to hilarious. The Committee laments the loss of MoD annual reports on climate change and sustainability. The MoD receives credit (from the Committee – not from me) for appearing to produce more climate change information than other nations’ armed forces (it appears that other nations’ armed forces are more focussed on the day job and more aware of the dangers of supplying useful information to potential enemies). However, the Committee is disappointed that the MoD has stopped providing the annual stand-alone progress report that it produced between 2010 and 2018. It has been replaced by the MoD’s higher-annual profile annual report and accounts, which contain only six pages of environmental information, compared to the 64-page Sustainable MOD Annual Report in 2018.

Consequently the underpinning detail has been lost (thank goodness – perhaps it dawned on someone at the MoD that providing such information to one’s potential enemies isn’t the best of strategies), and the Committee is upset that this makes external validation of the Ministry of Defence’s evidence (about progress towards net zero) more difficult. An example given is that in the report & accounts published in July 2022 the MoD’s reported overall emissions from the defence estate are more than 40% higher than quoted in earlier reports, but neither explanation nor underlying data are provided to explain this “apparent discrepancy”. So much for being global leaders!

Reading on, one feels as though one has entered a parallel universe:

The inclusion of the ‘Defence Carbon Footprint’ in the Annual Report & Accounts 2021–22 was a welcome development. This revealed total measured emissions for defence at around three-and-a-half times the level of those emissions reported as part of central government’s Greening Government Commitments (GGC) targets — 0.96 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) compared to 3.34M tCO2e. However, even this figure for total measured emissions fails to come close to an estimated total for overall UK defence emissions. In 2020 Dr Stuart Parkinson used the methodology of Professor Mike Berners-Lee of Lancaster University to estimate total emissions (referred to as the ‘carbon footprint’) from UK defence at around 13 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e).

This broader figure is more challenging to calculate accurately, but the Ministry of Defence could commission work to estimate it better, and ensure it is independently verified.

Seriously? Apparently so. The Committee concludes:

Measuring and reporting against the total defence carbon emission figure would support both the Government’s agenda of reducing emissions to net zero by 2050, but also provide a gold standard of military emissions reporting for other countries to emulate. Good practice would be to ensure these figures are independently verified.

Net zero continues to trump all else, including the need for military secrecy.

Defence’s contribution to ‘net zero’

This section starts with a statement of the blindingly obvious:

One of the challenges faced by Defence is to contribute to the UK’s goal of becoming net zero by 2050 without eroding military capability.

Or as I prefer to express it, the incompatibility of net zero by 2050 with maintaining military capability. Even Lieutenant-General Nugee (retd), non-executive director for climate change and sustainability in the Ministry of Defence recognised that simple truth when he told the Committee that:

…we are not going to get to zero. We will not have electric tanks, with current technology, and we still need tanks, as has been proved in Ukraine. There is only so far that we can go…

Well, thank goodness for that counter-blast of common sense. The Epochs targets (mentioned above) currently relate only to reducing emissions from the MoD estate and civilian operations, and not to any emissions that might have an impact on military operations. Even so, the “global leaders” at the MoD might be said to be paying little more than lip service to the net zero fiasco:

However, compared to other central government departments, the Ministry of Defence has the least demanding ‘direct emissions’ target of 10% (compared to an average of 25% for all departments) and the second-least demanding ‘overall emissions reduction target’ of 30% (compared to the average of 49%) (Figure 7). This, despite the Ministry of Defence admitting that it produces half of all central government’s carbon emissions, based on the GGC criteria.

If – as I hope – the MoD is simply playing the game of pretending to be signed up to this nonsense, and stringing the politicians along, then paragraph 77 of the report is hilariously revealing:

In fact, according to Dr Stuart Parkinson, Executive Director, Scientists for Global Responsibility, the target for reducing carbon emissions “… has been set so lax that it would be met even if the MOD took no action to reduce emissions before 2025.” This is because the two principal GGC targets focus on emissions across the defence estate, much of which emanate from energy supplied by the National Grid. The Grid has been decarbonising and expanding its use of low-carbon energy sources — especially wind power — thereby reducing the emissions of any users of that energy. Consequently, Dr Stuart Parkinson’s analysis suggests that, against Defence’s GGC ‘overall emissions’ (i.e. the defence estate and civilian operations) target of 30% by 2025, emissions will reduce by 32% purely through the work of the National Grid, without the Department having to take any action whatsoever (see Annex 3 for a detailed calculation).

The Defence Committee is having none of it:

For the next round of Greening Government Commitments from 2025–2030, Defence should ensure its targets are more demanding and accompanied by plans to achieve them.

It’s rather worrying that this section of the report is so lengthy and detailed. Time and again the Committee examines the plans (or lack of them) of the various services within the MoD, and asks for greater detail, more planning, more public reporting, and better understanding of targets and how to achieve them. Personally I regard this as a massive distraction from the MoD’s day job. Regrettably, the Committee doesn’t see things that way – greenhouse gas emissions and net zero seem to be an overriding obsession.

Earlier in this article, I mentioned that the Climate Change Director within the MoD actually has the job title of Director, Levelling Up, The Union, Climate Change and Sustainability. At this point the Committee expresses its doubts as to the ongoing sense of combining such roles. Worryingly, their doubts aren’t regarding the strangeness of dumping such diverse jobs on one individual, but rather because of “the pressing need for reductions in carbon emissions.” So pressing, indeed, that the Committee wheels out another quote from John Kerry at this point. The conclusion at paragraph 93 is as follows:

Given increasing scientific concerns around failing to hold to the 1.5° limit on warming and the need for Defence to transition from establishing a comprehensive baseline of carbon emissions in Epoch 1 to significantly reducing emissions in Epoch 2, having the climate change director also responsible for the Union and Levelling-Up in the Ministry of Defence may be too distracting for the important work that needs to be achieved at pace.

And that’s it. There are sixteen conclusions in total, many of which I have covered above. If I haven’t mentioned them, I don’t believe they are worth mentioning. All relate to climate change and net zero, as might be expected from a report with the title that this one has. One can’t help feeling that the Defence Committee’s focus is concentrated on the wrong area.

Conclusions

The report is singularly lacking in logic and common sense. It commences very solemnly by setting the scene, including (at paragraph 2) a reference to “legislation requiring the Government to reduce the UK’s net emissions of greenhouse gases by 100% relative to 1990 levels by 2050.” By paragraph 31 that is being referred to as “the Government’s challenge to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.” By paragraph 32, the report refers to “the 2050 net zero goal” and by paragraph 34, it talks of “the Government’s 2050 net zero target.” So a legal requirement becomes by stages a challenge, then a goal, then a target. Do these people have the faintest understanding of what they have legislated for and what it truly means?

Next we learn that the activities of the MoD account for around half of the Government’s greenhouse gas emissions, but that ships in the late design stages for the Royal Navy and 1,000 armoured vehicles that are to be supplied to the army in the next few years will run on diesel and many will remain operational beyond the crucial 2050 date. Nevertheless, the MoD is told that it has to pursue oxymoronic aims by ““push[ing] hard to reduce carbon emissions from its equipment, without eroding military capability.”

And in order to “save the planet” the Committee thinks that the MoD should report transparently (thus facilitating independent verification) on its greenhouse gas emissions in a way that will “provide a gold standard of military emissions reporting for other countries to emulate.” If the members of the Committee seriously think that the armies of the world’s greatest greenhouse gas emitters (many of whom, regrettably, are potential enemies, who must welcome such transparency from the MoD) would emulate such foolhardiness, then I respectfully suggest that they’re in the wrong job.

Postscript

The House of Commons Defence Committee has eleven members, of whom five are Conservatives, one SNP, four Labour and one DUP. The agenda is shared by MPs of all parties. I have no doubt that the sole Green MP and few Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru members in the House of Commons would be happy to sign up to the report.

Footnote – for non-UK readers, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum was a 1970s BBC comedy series about an army troupe entertaining soldiers in India during World War Two. Regrettably, as that comedy show demonstrated to a degree, the UK’s armed forces for several centuries have been well used to operating in countries with all extreme temperatures imaginable, from tropical jungles and arid deserts to Arctic Norway (at the start of the Second World War) and the Falklands.