Is War the Climate Crisis We're Not Talking About?

We spend a lot of time talking about the things we can control. The plastic you didn't buy this week. The shampoo bar that replaced three bottles. The compost bin sitting quietly on your balcony. Small, daily, hopeful acts, the kind that say “I believe there is a future worth protecting”.

And then you look up. And you see what's happening in the world.

War is one of the most ecologically destructive forces on the planet. Not metaphorically. Literally. Conflicts devastate forests, contaminate water systems, release catastrophic amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, and leave behind landscapes that take generations, sometimes centuries to recover. 

The UN Environment Programme found that over the last 60 years, at least 40% of all internal conflicts have been linked to the exploitation of natural resources. Land that stored carbon for hundreds of years, gone. Ecosystems that took millennia to build, fractured in months. And the communities closest to the land, the ones who contributed least to the crisis and understand most intimately what's being lost, bear the cost first and longest.

We find that hard to sit with. We hope you do too.

Artificial Intelligence for war? What if we used it differently?

We have, right now, today, one of the most important tools in human history which can help us mitigate climate change.  Artificial intelligence, and we say this as people who believe in using technology for good is extraordinary.

It can predict extreme weather events before they strike. It can track deforestation in real time, identify the most damaged ecosystems, and deploy restoration at a scale no human team ever could. It can optimise energy grids, accelerate the discovery of sustainable materials, help farmers adapt to rainfall patterns that no longer behave the way their grandparents taught them to read.

Instead, a growing share of the world's AI investment, talent, and infrastructure is being funnelled into military systems. Smarter surveillance. Faster targeting. More efficient conflict. The same technology that could map a coral reef's recovery is being pointed somewhere else entirely.

We're not here to tell you who's right and who's wrong in any of it. 

But we are here to say: the opportunity cost is the planet. Every billion that goes into building smarter weapons is a billion not building smarter grids, greener cities, or more resilient food systems. Every year we delay the green transition is a year we don't get back.

At Bare Necessities, we started with a very simple idea: that the things you use every day shouldn't cost the earth. Literally. And we still believe in the power of small, consistent, individual choices, genuinely.

But we also believe in being honest. In not pretending that bamboo toothbrushes alone will close the gap. In saying out loud that the biggest levers of climate action are not in your bathroom cabinet, they're in policy rooms, funding decisions, and choices about what our most powerful technologies are built to do.

You can't recycle your way out of a burning world. But you can refuse to look away from what's doing the burning.