Wars exert a grievous global assault on the brain.

Environmentalists and anti-war activists share a common goal in reducing war’s carbon footprint.

Preserving brain health hinges on the discovery of links involving unrelated harmful forces.

If we have any chance of prevailing against the life challenges we currently face (multiple wars, global warming, environmental pollution, and so on), we must train our brains in new ways of observing and thinking.

What’s needed is to hone our ability to discover underappreciated links between seemingly unrelated forces. The brain, with its billions of neuronal connections, seems ideally suited for doing that, since every neuron is at least potentially influenced and is influencing an unknown number of other neurons.

Using the brain as our model, what’s required is a recognition of the need to “up our game” when it comes to understanding causation and interrelation.

Take the factors already recognized as contributing to global warming.

Increased heat leads to dryness, fires, and smoke, which, in combination, damage the brain. Only recently have wars been added to the litany of contributors to global warming and brain damage. When you thought of global warming, did wars, as significant contributing factors, come to mind? Probably not, since the science supporting the relationship is recent.

Take the current war in the Middle East, initially involving Israel, the United States, and Iran. So far, the drain on the global carbon budget is happening faster than the annual carbon emission of the 84 lowest carbon-emitting countries in the world, resulting in a greater accumulation of CO2 in much less time (5 million tons of CO2 released in just 14 days of war). Destroyed buildings comprise the largest element of the estimated carbon cost; the burning of fossil fuels is the second-highest cost. “Every missile strike is another down payment on a hotter, more unstable planet,” according to Patrick Bigger, a research director at the Climate and Community Institute and a co-author of the war-carbon study on the current war in the Middle East.

As another linkage between climate and war, consider how the melting of Arctic ice has transformed Greenland from a remote, frozen, and relatively inaccessible island into a now highly desirable site for military surveillance and potential conflict directed against Russia’s stepped-up naval forays in that part of the world.

How to Best Think About War’s Threats

In the 1980s, the United States Army War College formulated a working concept based on what was known at the time about the uncertainties of the battlefield. The acronym they coined, VUCA, stands for:

Volatility: The speed of change in a dynamic system

Uncertainty: A lack of predictability coupled with incomplete and imperfect information

Complexity: An unknown interconnectedness in situations composed of multiple variables

Ambiguity: Systems and situations lacking clarity and lending themselves to multiple interpretations

In the wake of 9/11, VUCA found a home in both the military and business communities. Anyone working in strategic planning, whether military or civilian, could usually incorporate into their operational worldview one or more of VUCA’s principles. Moreover, the influence was bidirectional. The model helped to explain the world of the first two decades of the 21st century while also helping to forge a response to that world. Recognizing the world as complex, uncertain, rapidly changing, and most of all, ambiguous led to coping strategies based on the recognition that, because of rapid change, today may no longer be similar to yesterday or tomorrow.

But while it was a useful concept in the first two decades of the 21st century, VUCA no longer describes the world in which we now find ourselves: Social unrest, heightened anxiety, wars, and fears about nuclear war have moved us far beyond the VUCA model. In its place is what futurist Jamais Cascio, a member of the faculty of the Institute for the Future, terms BANI, an acronym for Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible.

Cascio’s description of life in our current society is unsettling because it’s often difficult to determine what’s real. Cascio has gone on record stating, “This current moment of political chaos, disasters, climatic and global pandemic much more vividly demonstrates the need for a way to make sense of the world, the need for a new method or tool to see the shapes this era of chaos takes.”

The BANI concept serves as a framework to articulate the increasingly common situations in which simple volatility and complexity prove insufficient for understanding what’s happening. “The concepts we have developed over the years to recognize and respond to common disruptions seem increasingly and painfully inadequate when the world seems to be crumbling,” states Cascio.

While VUCA spoke of uncertainty, BANI speaks of outcomes that are “completely unpredictable” and involves “situations where what happens is not simply ambiguous, it is incomprehensible,” according to Cascio.

How might we protect the brain within such a world? We might start by recognizing and responding to the new correlations that we’re discovering, such as the extent of war’s damaging effect on the brains of people around the globe. War can no longer be thought about in strictly localized terms. All of us are affected by attacks on military bases, ships at sea, and most of all, infrastructure built from fossil fuel. When buildings are vaporized, the ensuing tons of CO2 emitted eventually end up affecting the brains of people living over widely dispersed areas of the planet. We already know that air pollution increases dementia. Added to that are its so far unknown but undoubtedly significant effects on cognition.

Fortunately, there is some good news in all of this. Cascio, along with other futurists, suggests specific strategies: combating Brittleness with resilience, Anxiety with mindfulness, Nonlinearity with control, and Incomprehensibility with intuition.

The interests of both peacemakers and environmentalists are served by taking into account these findings of the effects of war on climate and the brain. Any war, no matter where it’s taking place or how long or short its duration, leads to major increases in CO2 buildup, resulting in an increase in temperatures, which can in turn reshuffle military priorities as is now occurring with regard to Greenland.

Whatever coping strategies we come up with to reduce wars, remember, we are not just spectators, but participants—like it or not, we’re all in this together.

Richard M. Restak, M.D.

Alzheimer’s Society, “Air pollution and the risk of dementia”; https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/managing-the-risk-of-dementia/reduce-your-risk-of-dementia/air-pollution

Best Rogowski, Clare, Bredell C, Shi Y et al. “Long-term air pollution exposure and incident dementia: a systematic review and meta-analysis”; The Lancet Planetary Health Volume 9, Issue 7, 101266, July 24, 2025: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(25)00118-4/fulltext

Conflict and Environment Observatory | Charity No: 1174115 “Operation Epic Fury: emerging environmental harm and risks in Iran and the region”; March 26: https://ceobs.org/operation-epic-fury-emerging-environmental-harm-and-risks-in-iran-and-the-region/

National Institutes of Health, “Air pollution linked to dementia cases”; September 5, 2023: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/air-pollution-linked-dementia-cases

Neimark, Benjamin, Otu-Larbi F, Larbi R et al. “Israel-Gaza conflict carbon emissions exceeded 30 million tons” One Earth 9 (3), March 26, 2026: https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(26)00049-7

Neimark, Benjamin et al. “War on the Climate: A Multitemporal Study of Greenhouse Gas Emissions of the Israel-Gaza Conflict”; SSRN, May 30, 2025: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5274707

Cascio, Jamais, Bob Johansen and Angela F. Williams “Navigating the Age of Chaos: A Sense-Making Guide to a BANI World That Doesn’t Make Sense”; Berrett-Koehler Publishers, October 28, 2025, ISBN-13: 979-8890571212

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