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It’s time to talk about the elephant in the room. The single most polluting industry
in the world. The military. Specifically, the U.S. military, because the U.S. war machine
currently has a yearly budget of over $700 billion, which dwarfs the military spending
of the next 8 countries combined in 2018. The U.S. military is a behemoth, and the environmental
consequences of its massive size and global presence are equally immense. Indeed, if the
American military was a country it would rank 47th, right in between Peru and Portugal,
for highest global greenhouse gas emissions, and that’s only based on military fuel use.
Despite this, we’re very rarely exposed to the idea of the U.S. military-industrial
complex as a possible contributor to climate change. Instead, individual actions, like
taking shorter showers or composting food waste, seem to be the primary push of the
environmental movement. So the big question is: what are the consequences of this massive
U.S. military machine? And ultimately, what are the connections between militarism and
climate change?
The environmental cost of the U.S. military is so large because the country has continuously
piled money into the Department of Defence ever since the 1980s Reagan Era push for military
spending transformed the world’s biggest lender into the biggest debtor. A recently
approved defense budget of $738 billion for the 2020 fiscal year only cements this lust
for U.S. military growth around the globe. And to be clear, the U.S. military is a global
entity. It has established roughly 800 military bases in 80 countries around the world according
to David Vine, author of Base Nation. To put that in perspective, all other countries combined
have established roughly 70 foreign bases. So, the U.S. military is gargantuan, and to
fuel that machine, they need, well, fuel. From 2001 to 2017, the U.S. military emitted
an estimated 1.2 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent according to the Watson Institute
for International and Public Affairs. That’s the same as putting an additional 257 million
cars, or roughly the current amount of passenger cars currently in operation, on the road in
the U.S. for a whole year. From Humvees running at 4 miles per gallon, or gas-guzzling F-22
fighter jets, the machines of war that the Department of Defense purchases and maintains
require a lot of fuel. In the realm of 85 million barrels of fuel in 2017. But the U.S.
military pollution doesn’t stop and end at emissions. The military has blazed a sharp
trail of environmental and chemical pollution across the world, racking up 39,000 contaminated
sites according to a Newsweek interview with the former head of environmental programs
at the Pentagon. 143 of the Superfund sites in the United States are military bases, and
900 of the 1344 total sites are areas that previously supported military needs according
to the same Newsweek interview. At Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, for example, the drinking
water servicing over 170,000 people is so polluted with cancer-causing chemical solvents
like trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene that it's been called “the worst example
of water contamination this world has ever seen.” In short, the U.S. military has a
long track record of pollution and emissions that often is tacitly accepted by otherwise
environmentally-minded people in the name of national defense and military preparedness.
But let’s be clear here, the majority of the wars the U.S. has fought, and the massive
military structure it’s built has rarely been in the name of peace or safety. More
often than not it’s centered around profit and control. The United States has a long
history of using military power to assert dominance over potentially strategic or profitable
entities. Like in Panama in 1989, when George H. W. Bush deployed 25,000 troops to oust
the military leader and previous CIA “asset,” General Noriega, who began acting against
U.S. interests. In Noriega’s stead, Bush propped up Guillermo Endara, who was much
more loyal to the U.S. global agenda and willing to allow the U.S. to maintain control over
the Panama Canal. Or in 1973 when the United States supported a coup to overthrow democratically-elected
Chilean socialist leader Salvador Allende, replacing him with ruthless dictator Augusto
Pinochet, who in the months following his rise to power imprisoned, tortured and killed
thousands of supposed leftist-sympathizers in order to establish an economy that a New
York Times reporter called “a banker’s delight.” Or the U.S. backed indiscriminate
slaughter of East Timorese by Indonesian forces, or the multi-decade war razing Iraq to the
ground to protect the flow of fuel from Middle Eastern oil fields into American cars. The
same oil fields, which Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, secured
a noncompetitive contract for up to seven billion dollars to rebuild. The list drags
on. The point here is this: in many cases, the U.S. military has guzzled millions of
barrels of fuel and killed thousands to establish and maintain control of profitable international
interests. One of the most decorated marines in U.S. history, Major General Smedley Butler
rams this reality home in his book, War is a Racket: “I spent 33 years and four months
in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class
muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer,
a gangster for capitalism.”
Ironically, the Department of Defence has released reports characterizing climate change
as a security risk, but of course, their solution is not to scale back their own emissions-intensive
operations but instead it’s doing more of the same. So, when we’re trying to understand
the connections between environmentalism and demilitarization, we have to recognize a simple
reality: War is always an environmental hazard. There is no such thing as a responsible military
or green war. It is, in fact, irresponsible to suggest that it’s possible to “green
the military,” as Elizabeth Warren has proposed. Though it is admirable to try to find solutions
within a corrupt and irredeemable system, the 2018 IPCC report has made clear that we
have no time for slow change, and small reforms prevent us from focusing on and investing
in the larger, more radical changes that need to happen. Demilitarization is a lofty goal;
in the United States, it is not unreasonable to feel despair about the possibility of ever
demilitarizing a country with such a fetish for violence and control. But dire circumstances
require radical solutions. Keep in mind that even if the current military budget is slashed
in half, the U.S. would still spend more than double the amount China does. So, the military-industrial
complex is beyond bloated. And as we look towards a future marked by climate change,
to me it’s clear where taxpayer money needs to go. If the United States can pour $4.79
trillion into the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, they certainly can extract themselves
from a fossil-fuel centric economy. The money doesn’t need to be piled into the over-polluting
and violent machine that is the U.S. military, it instead needs to be invested in strong,
publically-favored initiatives like the Green New Deal, which would supply dignified low-carbon
jobs to thousands, reinvest in the U.S.’s crumbling infrastructure, and establish an
economy based around care.
The gift-giving season is upon us, and usually that means a lot of material-centric presents
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Hey Everyone! Charlie here. Thanks for making it all the way to the end of the video. If
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