New Delhi, Sept. 8 -- We can all intuitively tell that war is terrible for the environment. We are also correct when we link greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution to bombings, missile attacks, and fires from various sources. Two studies should be considered together in order to truly understand how wars harm us all. A study by Feng, Z. et al., released in the prestigious Nature journal a few days ago, looks at the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. The authors found that "urban methane emissions, initially just 21% of rural levels, rapidly rise to match rural levels after very few attacks and escalate to ~146%-588% of rural levels under extensive and intensive warfare, revealing urban systems' greater vulnerability to warfare disruption". In fact, it was infrastructure that was a key source of methane. Meanwhile, a May 2023 research publication on the Middle East and North Africa regions by Chen et al. links weak governance, in particular those in conflict-affected areas, as a contributor to increasing methane emissions. It seems that when sensors detect intense methane emissions, conflict might have arisen. Methane is the second biggest contributor to climate change -- a phenomenon that has wiped out crops in large parts of India, caused huge loss of assets and an intense health crisis. That a war can add to the load is unfair and horrific. Even more when the war has nothing to do with people in faraway lands. For this reason alone, we need a rapid de-escalation of conflicts and not more funding for any country's arsenal. Without this, the most vulnerable across the world will be forced victims of an alien conflict....