War & Climate

Earth’s Greatest Enemy. A film currently (Sept. 2021) in production from Abby Martin of Empire Files. Watch the trailer here.

Earth’s Greatest Enemy is the second feature film project by Abby Martin. In collaboration with the Empire Files team and award-winning journalist Dahr Jamail, Earth’s Greatest Enemy seeks to be a groundbreaking anti-imperialist environmental documentary. 

It will center the US Empire—with its expansive war machine, Military Industrial Complex and junior partners—as not only a primary contributor to climate change, but the central entity that imperils life on Earth. Through on-the-ground investigations, high-profile interviews and new cutting-edge research, Earth’s Greatest Enemy will make the case that the movement to save the planet has no choice but to confront the beast that is American Imperialism.

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Why action on militarism is essential to action on climate change

“Militarism isn’t just a key driver in climate change; we also know that activists will face increasingly militarized responses as their actions and demands escalate.”

Why action on militarism is essential to action on climate change

The goals of the wider climate movement aren’t reachable without simultaneously dismantling the increasingly militarized power structures in our world.

Andrew Metheven February 7, 2020

Over the last few weeks and months, grassroots activism has pushed climate change into the media in the United Kingdom. In particular, the Extinction Rebellion movement has spread from the UK to countries around the world, while the youth strike actions initiated by Greta Thunberg have led to thousands of young people leaving school to demand governments take action on climate issues. 

However, the goals of groups like Extinction Rebellion and the wider climate movement will be impossible to achieve without simultaneously dismantling the increasingly militarized power structures in our world, and that these require a similarly radical response as climate change. This short article tries to set out how and why we need to understand militarism and climate change as two sides of the same coin — both intimately linked in the impact they have on our world, driven, supported and maintained by the same power structures.

What is militarism?

Militarism is a key cause of many of the problems we face today in our world. A militarized society is one that thinks of the world as a dangerous place, with lots of perceived threats, and considers violence or the threat of violence as a normal, rational, or even preferred response to threats. A society is militarized when it adopts the values and priorities of military bodies (i.e. strict hierarchy and discipline, extreme violence is normalized, strict binary gender norms) as its own. Militarism impact how we respond to conflict, educate children and young people, spend money, understand gender, build relationships, perceive threat, indeed, it impacts how we live our lives… militarism is deeply entwined in all of our different societal frameworks and structures, and we can see its impacts on every level – from the personal to the international. Militarism is also deeply coupled with capitalism; as we will explore in more detail later, states often turn to militarized solutions when trying to sustain exploitative, extractivist projects. This is much of War Resisters’ International’s work is focused on issues like conscription and supporting conscientious objectors, resisting youth militarization, and understanding how police forces are militarized.

Why should we be talking about militarism in relation to climate change? Surely both are complex enough to try and deal with, without bringing the two together?

If war is the tip of the iceberg we see when conflict breaks out, militarism is what exists below the surface. A similar “iceberg” model can be used to try and get our heads around climate change. If extreme weather events are what we see above the surface, then the systemic (capitalist) and cultural drivers of climate change (and our lack of response) are hidden below the surface. Free market capitalism, neoliberalism, colonialism, greed, indifference, ignorance, poverty, racism, exploitation… all of which are sustained, in different ways and by varying degrees, by militarism.

Climate change poses an existential threat and communities around the world are already feeling the impacts of more extreme, unpredictable weather. Groups like Extinction Rebellion, or XR, have demanded much more radical action to avoid the worst impacts (in the UK, XR have demand the government pushes for net zero carbon emissions by 2025, for example). This degree of change will require a rapid societal transformation away from exploitative, carbon-intensive industry, and an essential part of this process will be challenging and transforming the militarized aspects of our lives. Quite simply, it is difficult to understand how we will be able to achieve climate justice while our states and societies remain militarized. Here are three reasons why.

1. Demands for radical transformation will face militarized responses

Militarism isn’t just a key driver in climate change; we also know that activists will face increasingly militarized responses as their actions and demands escalate. When the water protectors at Standing Rock blocked the Dakota Access Pipeline in late 2016 and early 2017, the police response was very violent, including tear gas and pepper spray, automatic weapons, dogs, armored vehicles and mass arrests. Amnesty International described police as “outfitted in gear more suited for the battlefield”.

Militarized responses to protest and demands for change are witnessed all over the world – tear gas and other “less lethal” weapons are now often a preferred response by many police forces around the world. Though not directly linked to climate change, the intense oppression witnessed during the “Arab Spring” illustrates how states are willing and able to respond when facing demands for system change. Professor Paul Rogers uses the term “liddism” to describe how states and elites attempt to try and “keep the lid on things”, preferring to use violence or other means to maintain the status quo. One illustration of this is the ever increasing for tear gas and other “less lethal” weapons used by militarized police forces around the world (for an introduction to tear gas and other weapons, check out Anna Feigenbaum’s book “Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of World War I to the Streets of Today”).

Militarism and climate change are inextricably linked with racism and colonialism. In her critique of Extinction Rebellion, Minnie Rahman explains how arms companies see climate change as an opportunity rather than a threat, as borders become more intensely militarized, and that people from indigenous communities are routinely threatened and killed because of their activism, as states, corporations, and paramilitary groups look to sustain the status quo.

A key driver in all of these militarized responses is how the military-industrial complex is itself understanding climate change. In military circles, climate change is perceived as a security threat that many involved in military planning are now factoring into their analysis of conflict drivers in the future – as far back as 2003, the US military described climate change as a “threat multiplier”, which means that they believe climate change will increase the impact of other perceived threats.

Understanding climate change through the lens of the military isn’t helpful – just because climate change is recognized as a problem doesn’t mean that solutions will be equitable or just. As described by Nick Buxton in the Guardian, “by framing climate change as a security matter… has significant consequences in shaping how we respond to a warming planet.” One illustration of this is how borders are being militarized — rich countries around the world are looking for ways to limit migration driven — in part – by climate change, and arms companies are quick to ensure they reap the profits from this militarization. If we allow militarized solutions to exacerbate, communities most impacted by climate change will continue to be treated as threats to be countered, rather than people living in an oppressive system, from which they are trying to protect themselves and their loved ones.

As pressures like food insecurity, mass migration, competition over resources, lost employment opportunities, and other factors increase, militarized responses will limit the potential for climate justice, and so we need to undermine the militarized narrative that drives militarized responses.

2. Militarism poses a similar existential threat as climate change

Another reason militarism and climate change are linked is by their potential impact on humanity and the planet — both are potential existential threats to humanity. The doomsday clock — a project of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — charts how close humanity is to midnight (or “how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making”), and considers both climate change and nuclear weapons in its analysis.

Nuclear weapons pose an increasing risk to humanity. Tensions are escalating, and many nuclear armed states are upgrading their weapons systems – for example, the United States has started production of a low-yield “tactical” nuclear weapon that could make nuclear weapons more “usable”, and risking rapid escalation to larger nuclear weapons. The United States and Russia have recently pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile launchers with ranges of 500–1,000 kilometers and led to the removal of U.S. land-launched nuclear weapons in Europe.

If we’re serious about avoiding extinction, then militarism poses a similar, existential threat to humanity and the natural world as climate change does.

3. The climate impact of the military

Perhaps the most obvious reason why we need to think about climate change in relation to climate change is the simple fact that the military is a huge contributor to carbon emissions. The U.S. military is the world’s single biggest user of petrol, but since the 1997 Kyoto talks, the military has been exempted from required reductions in greenhouse gas emissions – since then, none of the world’s militaries have been factored into negotiations on reducing carbon emissions, they are given a free pass to continue to emit as many greenhouse gases as they want.

As well as causing huge volumes of greenhouse gas emissions, militaries also consume huge amounts of financial and human resources that could be being used to respond to issues like climate change. In 2017, global military expenditure was $1.7 trillion. In 2015, the UK government allocated £25 billion to the Ministry of Defense, but  only £1.5 billion to the Department for Energy and Climate Change. Many of the nuclear armed states are modernizing their nuclear weapons systems, locking in vast amounts of money in future weapons spending. The logic is simple — wouldn’t this money, as well as all the skills and expertise of all the engineers, programmers, designers, technicians, and other skilled workers be better applied to combating climate change?

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Communities around the world, but especially in the majority world, are already facing and responding to the direct impacts of a climate-destabilized world, and states are turning to increasingly militarized solutions as they try to find an answer to the climate crisis.

If we want a world radically transformed, with the values of climate justice at the heart of that transformation, then this will also require a similarly radical demilitarization, and it is impossible to imagine a demilitarized world when the threats of climate change continues to destabilize communities, economies. Both are intimately linked, and an end to either is reliant on effective responses to both. We know that genuine solutions to climate change need to be rooted in justice, and this will be impossible while the structures and systems that drive climate change are supported and sustained by militarism.

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A great resource at World Beyond War: Why End War?….War Threatens Our Environment. https://worldbeyondwar.org/environment/

The following article originally appeared at In These Times, by Sarah Lazare, Feb. 10, 2020. http://inthesetimes.com/article/22293/climate-justice-militarism-australia-fires-iran-green-new-deal

War Is an Enormous Threat to the Climate Movement

Unless challenged, U.S. military power imperils any serious response to the climate crisis.

U.S. wars have historically been used to beat back and repress exactly the kind of left movements that we need to tackle the climate crisis.

The 2020s opened with dual crises.

In Australia, unprecedented bushfires tore across a total area the size of Virginia, killing at least 29people and an estimated one billion animals, and destroying 2,000 homes. The news was flooded with images of thousands of people taking refuge on Australia’s southeastern coastline, the sun blocked by thick smoke, children wearing surgical masks, in a crisis whose severity is unambiguously tied to climate change.

On January 3, the Trump administration brought the United States to the brink of war when it assassinated Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force and a ranking official of Iran. Iran responded by bombing a U.S. base in Iraq, and the world watched in horror to see what President Trump would do next. Though Trump has backed away from direct warfare for the moment, he vowed on January 8 to escalate already-devastating sanctions on Iran.

For those of us who went into the new year sober about the fact that this decade is our chance to stem climate change, the very real possibility of all-out war with Iran was a rude awakening to the fact that U.S. belligerence could ruin everything.

To win a Green New Deal with the teeth to keep fossil fuels in the ground and secure a just transition and job guarantee for all workers, it will take organizing and protest on an unprecedented scale.  U.S. wars, however, have historically been used to beat back and repress exactly the kind of left movements that we need to tackle the climate crisis. The supposed need to protect national unity and “security” during wartime has been used by the U.S. government to justify heightened surveillance and clampdown against those deemed disruptive—disproportionately targeting the Left. World War I was used to justify the passage of the Espionage Act, which criminalized speech deemed “disloyal” and was a bludgeon against anti-war movements, and was also used to prosecute and imprison hundreds of radical unionists. The Cold War, too, was used to justify a vicious campaign of political repression not only against people perceived to be communists and socialists, but also against civil rights and black freedom organizers.

In the aftermath of September 11, the drumbeat for war in Afghanistan and then Iraq was used to justify a broad range of repressive measures targeting social movements. Democrats overwhelmingly voted for the PATRIOT Act, which gave law enforcement and intelligence agencies sweeping powers to search and surveil World Trade Organization protesters and environmental activists. In November of 2003, Miami Police Chief John Timoney launched a vicious crackdown on thousands of people who had gathered to protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas Summit: He was assisted by 40 law enforcement agencies, the FBI, and $8.5-million earmarked from Congress to pay for the Iraq War, and he had worked hard to convince residents of Miami that protesters were a public safety threat. A crowd of farmworkers, union members and activists concerned about “free trade” running roughshod over human and planetary wellbeing was attacked with tear gas, stun guns, rubber bullets and concussion grenades, as helicopters hovered continuously overhead.

As social movements are besieged, wars are used to justify more militarism across the globe. The United States emerged as the world’s preeminent military empire after World War II, and has since expanded its empire, now the largest in human history, with 800 bases spanning the globe. If history is any indicator, a U.S. war in Iran would almost certainly lead to a hike in overall military budgets. In fact, the United States has already used its aggression towards Iran to justify increasing the U.S. military presence in the Middle East by 20,000 troops since last spring.

This military empire, in turn, enables the same global bullying driving the climate crisis. The United States is the number-one per-capita emitter of greenhouse gases, while China is the overall highest emitter. Yet, its international domination ensures that the United States never has to pay meaningful reparations, or answer to those countries hardest hit, most of them in the Global South, and still scarred by their histories of colonialism and plunder.  And due to its position as the most powerful country in the world, the United States has also dominated the very institutions meant to intervene in global crises—in particular, the United Nations—meaning the United States will never have to answer for its staggering global wrongdoings, from pulling out of the Paris climate accords to waging war in Yemen. The United States wouldn’t have the power that it has if not for its military strength, and if that strength were to diminish, so would its sway at the UN.

There are plenty of reasons for U.S. climate justice and anti-war movements to unite against common enemies. The same Democratic Party leadership that has failed to take robust action to curb climate change and gotten behind Trump’s climate-unfriendly U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement has also reliably rubber-stamped Trump’s massive military budgets and overwhelmingly voted to pass new sanctions on Iran, Russia and North Korea in 2017. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who last year famously scolded children who asked her to support the Green New Deal by telling them “I know what I’m doing,” also voted to authorize the Iraq War. And Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has been prominently targeted by Sunrise Movement sit-ins, has supported disastrous U.S. interventions, from Afghanistan to Libya, and declined to meet with Yemeni peace campaigners. The imperialist arrogance that undergirds the bipartisan war consensus—that the U.S. has the right to impose its will on the world—also underlies the political consensus that the U.S. does not need to fulfill its own obligation to reduce the climate harm it is perpetrating across the planet.

Meanwhile, the same fossil fuel companies destroying the planet are donating to powerful think tanks pushing for war. The need for “energy security”—i.e. reliable access to energy sources—has become a popular oil industry buzzword. The notoriously hawkish American Enterprise Institute and Center for Strategic and International Studies receive significant funding from the fossil fuel industry. The Center for American Progress, which pushes militaristic policies in the Democratic Party, also receives funding from the natural gas distributor Pacific Gas and Energy Company. Together, these think tanks have played a role in pushing the U.S. into the kind of reckless brinkmanship towards Iran this decade opened with.

There are obviously other sizable militaries in the world other than the United States: As of 2018, China and Russia, for example, had military budgets roughly 38.5% and 9.4% of the U.S. military budget respectively. But there’s only one Americans can directly curb and one whose global reach fuels others to keep pace. For the sake of humanity’s future, permanent U.S. war footing cannot continue. If climate change is the cudgel, U.S. empire is the arm that wields it. Our only choice is to stop them both.


The following article originally appeared at World Beyond War, https://worldbeyondwar.org/dont-mention-the-us-military-carbon-footprint/

Don’t Mention the US Military Carbon Footprint!

US spending chart shows massive military spending

By Caroline Davies, February 4, 2020

Extinction Rebellion (XR) US has four Demands for our governments, local and national, the first of which is “Tell the Truth”. One truth that is not being told or spoken about openly, is the carbon footprint and other sustainability impacts of the US Military. 

I was born in the UK and, although I am now a US citizen, I have noticed that people are very uncomfortable saying anything negative about the US Military here. Having worked with many injured veterans as a physical therapist, I know how important it is for us to support our veterans; many Vietnam veterans still feel hurt about being blamed and discriminated against when they came home from that war. As horrific as wars are for everyone involved, especially the civilians in the countries we are attacking, the soldiers follow our orders – through the representatives we elect. Criticism of our military is not criticism of our soldiers; it is a criticism of us: we are all collectively responsible for the size of our military and what it does.

We cannot stay silent about what we are ordering our soldiers to do, that causes suffering to them and to countless unknown others across the globe, or how much our military is contributing to our climate crisis. A number of veterans are speaking up themselves. As a result of their own experiences, they are trying to get our attention about the devastating humanitarian and environmental impacts of war and the moral injury to the soldiers involved. Veterans For Peace have been talking about all of these issues since 1985 and About Face, which formed after 9/11, has described itself as, “Veterans taking action against militarism and endless wars”. Both of these groups have been speaking up loudly against any war with Iran.

The US Military is speaking about climate change and planning for how it will affect them. The US Army War College issued a report in August of this year, “Implications for Climate Change for the US Army”.   The second paragraph of this 52-page report said “The study did not look to ascribe causation to climate change (man-made or natural), as causation is distinct from effects and not pertinent to the approximately 50-year horizon considered for the study”. Imagine a fire department pointing a number of high-pressure blow torches at a burning house; then imagine that that same department would write a report on how they were going to manage this emergency, without mentioning (or planning) to switch off their blow torches. I was incensed when I read this. The rest of the report predicts an imminent future of civil unrest, disease and mass migration and describes climate change as a “threat multiplier”. Despite their intention to avoid any self-scrutiny, the report, somewhat cavalierly, describes the Army’s massive carbon spewing, munition poisoning and soil erosion, and summarizes it as follows:

 “In short, the Army is an environmental disaster”

If the US Army can say this in their own report, then why aren’t we talking about it? In 2017 “the Air Force purchased $4.9 billion worth of fuel and the Navy $2.8 billion, followed by the Army at $947 million and Marines at $36 million”. The US Airforce uses five times more fossil fuel than the US Army, so what does that make it? An environmental disaster x 5?

After reading the US Army War College Report, I was ready to “confront a general”. It turned out that a retired Air Force Lt. General was speaking at an upcoming Sustainability Event, co-sponsored by the Julie Anne Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability and the American Security Project on “Salute to Service: Climate Change and National Security”. Perfect! I have noticed that there are several talks a year at Arizona State University (ASU) by members of the armed services presenting their latest and greatest sustainability solutions, yet the elephant in the room is never mentioned. I wasn’t the only XR member who wanted to speak up at this event. Between us, we were able to raise many, if not all, of the following issues: 

 (Please take the time to digest the following figures – they are shocking when you do.)

US military spending chart

Our Discretionary Budget for 2020 ($1426 billion) is divided as follows:

  • 52% or $750 billion to the Military, and $989 billion, when you add in the budgets for Veterans Affairs, the State Department, National Security, Cybersecurity, National Nuclear Security and the FBI.
  • 0.028% or $343 million to renewable energy.
  • 2% or $31.7 billion to energy and environment.

In case you missed it, the percentage of what we spent on Renewable Energy is 0.028% or $343 million compared to what we spend on the military which was 52% or $734 billion: we spend almost 2000 times more on our military than we do on renewable energy. Does this make sense to you given the crisis we are in? Both of our Senators and almost all of our house representatives voted for this budget in the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020, with a few notable exceptions.

The General’s talk at ASU was definitely aimed to alert the public about the climate emergency and its implications for our security; we were in total agreement with him over this, even if we may have differed on the solutions. He was very gracious about giving us time to speak and, at the end of the talk said “this talk has been in the top 1-2% that I have given around the country”. Maybe, he, like us, felt better for starting this difficult conversation.

Every so often I meet people who really know what they are talking about in regards to our climate crisis; they have studied sustainability in depth, they often come from engineering or scientific backgrounds, and they tell me these same two things: “the most important thing we can do is to spend less overall and stop burning fossil fuels” – shouldn’t that also apply to the US Military?         

Many of us in Extinction Rebellion have already taken steps to cut back our carbon footprint such as downsizing our homes or going without a vehicle, and some of us have stopped flying. But the fact is, that even a homeless person in the US has double the carbon emission of the global per-capita, in large part because of our massive military spending. 

It isn’t even that our military spending is making us safer or improving the world, as evidenced by so many examples. Here are just a few from the Iraq War (which was contrary to the UN charter and therefore actually, an illegal war) and the war in Afghanistan, both of which are ongoing.

 “60,000 veterans died by suicide between 2008 and 2017” according to the Department of Veteran Affairs!

War is immensely destabilizing for the people and countries we bomb, and for our own families. War prevents sustainable development, causes political instability and increases the refugee crisis, over and above the terrible damage it causes to civilians’ lives, the built environment, landscapes and ecosystems: Even as the US Military “greens itself” and boasts of its sustainability innovations (imagine how many sustainability breakthroughs our cities and states could have on a US Military-sized budget): war can never be green.

At the ASU Talk, the General repeatedly responded to our concerns by telling us, “talk to your elected officials” and “we are just a tool”. In theory, he is correct, but does it feel like that to you? I think most of us, including our elected officials, are unwilling to speak out because we feel intimidated by our military, the sacrosanct support for it by our mainstream media, the corporate profiteers and lobbyists who keep some of us in our jobs and/or stock profits and, many of us are also benefiting from the income the military spending brings us and our state.  

The top six world arms dealers all have offices in Arizona. They are, in order: Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Boeing, Raytheon Northrop-Grumman and General Dynamic. Arizona received $10 billion of government defense spending in 2015. This funding could be reallocated to go towards providing free in-state college tuition and universal healthcare; many young people join our military as they have no job prospects or, way of affording college or medical care; they could be learning sustainability solutions for the future instead of learning how to be another cog in our highly-unsustainable everywhere-war machine. 

I do not hear any of our local or national environmental organizations talking about the military. This may be for many reasons: shame for all that we have done with our military, intimidation by decades of militaristic propaganda or perhaps, because environmental groups have not represented the people who join the military and have little connection to the sacrifices being made. Do you know anyone in the military or live near a base? There are 440 military bases in the US and at least 800 bases around the world, the latter of which cost $100 billion annually to maintain to: perpetuate endless wars, deeply offend, sicken and bring sexual violence to the local people, cause widespread and ongoing environmental damage, separate loved ones, excuse excessive weapons sales and off the charts oil use – ferrying our soldiers to and from them.  Many people and organizations are now working to close these bases and we must too.

Although military personnel numbers have almost halved since the Vietnam War and the percentage of the population in the US Military is now down to 0.4%, the percentage of minorities in the military has been increasing (compared to the civilian labor force), especially for black women (who are almost equal in number to white women in the army), black men and Hispanics. This means people of color are disproportionately suffering the health risks and dangers we expose them to overseas, through burn pits, for example and at home; typically, most military personnel live around the bases where their exposure to military pollutants is greater. Our own Luke Air Force Base has levels of Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFA’s), known to cause infertility and cancer, that are above safe lifetime limits in their ground and surface water. Sorry to alarm you but these chemicals have got into 19 other water testing sites across the Phoenix Valley;there is no end to the environmental and ecological damage in other countries because of our wars. 

Consider reading Nikhil Pal Singh’s excellent article, “Enough Toxic Militarism” for a disturbing and insightful analysis of the “costs of unbridled militarism”, which he chillingly observes, “are everywhere, hidden in plain sight”; “In particular, military interventions abroad have stoked racism at home. Police now operate with the weapons and mentality of combat soldiers, and they tend to frame vulnerable communities as enemies to be punished.” He also points to the mass shootings that are so common we don’t pay attention to them anymore, the metastasizing of the terrorist threats (“White supremacy is a greater threat than international terrorism right now” ), the antagonistic politics, the trillion dollar price tag leading us to “spiraling debt” and “war as a natural and unchanging backdrop to social life in the United States today.” 

I will never forget the shock of seeing an armored tank-like vehicle on 59thAvenue in Glendale, AZ with combat police hanging off all sides of it, going to find some potential “enemy combatants”. I have never seen anything like this in the UK, not even at the height of the IRA bombings and especially not in a quiet residential neighborhood.

Peer reviewed academic articles that are critical of the US Military’s ecological, humanitarian or carbon footprint are as hard to find as people talking about this subject.

An article titled “Hidden Carbon Costs of the “Everywhere War”: Logistics, geopolitical ecology, and the carbon boot‐print of the US military” looked at the immense supply train, its entangled relationship with the corporate sector, and subsequent massive oil usage of the US Military. It reported that the average fuel use per day per soldier was one gallon in WWII, 9 gallons in Vietnam and 22 gallons in Afghanistan. The authors concluded: “the headline summary is that social movements concerned with climate change must be every bit as vociferous in contesting US Military interventionism” as other causes of climate change.  

A second paper, “Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War”, examines military fuel usage for the US post-9/11 wars and the impact of that fuel usage on greenhouse gases emissions. It states “if the US military were to significantly decrease its greenhouse gas emissions it would make the dire climate change caused national security threats the US military fears and predicts less likely to occur”. Interestingly, military climate emissions were exempted from the Kyoto Protocol, but in the Paris Accord they were no longer exempted. No wonder we had to leave.

The irony is that the US Military is both concerned about climate change and a key contributor to climate change: “the military is not just a prolific user of oil, it is one of the central pillars of the global fossil-fuel economy…modern-day military deployment is about controlling oil-rich regions and defending the key shipping supply routes that carry half the world’s oil and sustain our consumer economy”. In fact, in the Army Report mentioned earlier, they talk about how to compete for the oil sources that will emerge when the Arctic Ice melts. Our consumer economy and our oil habits are supported by the US Military! So, we do have a responsibility to not keep buying stuff and reduce our own carbon footprints, as well as focusing on the Military and our politicians who keep writing them blank checks. Very few of our Arizona House Representatives voted against the 2020 Defense Budget and neither of our Senators did.

In summary, it is the US Military which is the true “threat multiplier” to the climate crisis.

 This all feels pretty uncomfortable to read and think about, doesn’t it? I mentioned cutting the military budget to pay for other programs at a local political meeting recently and received this comment, “Where are you from? You must hate the United States then?” I couldn’t answer this. I don’t hate Americans, but I do hate what we (collectively) do to people in our own country and around the world. 

What can we all do to make ourselves feel better and have an effect on all of this? 

  1. Talk about the US military and why it is ‘off limits” in climate, budget or general conversations and how you feel about all aspects of this topic.
  2. Encourage the groups you are in to put the US military footprint on their agenda. 
  3. Talk to your elected local state and national officials about cutting our military budget, ending our endless wars and stopping the environmental and humanitarian destruction we have for so long ignored. 
  4. Divest your savings from the war machine as well as fossil fuels. The people of Charlottesville, VA persuaded their city to divest from both weapons and fossil fuels and recently, New York City divested from trafficking nuclear weapons.
  5. Spend less on everything: buy less, fly less, drive less and live in smaller homes

A number of the groups below have local chapters you can join or will help you start one. Extinction Rebellion groups are spreading too, if we even have one in Phoenix now, there is a decent chance there is one near you. Feel inspired and hopeful when you read about how much the following organizations are doing to put things right:

military carbon footprint