Global Warming's Unacknowledged Threat: The PentagonSunday, 29 November 2015 00:00By Gar Smith, War Is A Crime | Op-Ed
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/33834-global-warming-s-unacknowledged-threat-the-pentagon
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USA soldiers stands guard in a check point on January 26, 2007 in Maxmur, Iraq.
Despite being the planet's single greatest institutional consumer of fossil
fuels, the Pentagon has been granted a unique exemption from reducing - or even
reporting - its pollution. (Photo: Sadik Gulec /Shutterstock.com)
During
the November 15 Democratic Presidential Debate, Vermont Senator Bernie
Sanders sounded an alarm that
"climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism." Citing a CIA
study, Sanders warned that countries around the world are "going to be
struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their
crops and you're going to see all kinds of international conflict."
On
November 8, the World Bank predicted that climate change is on track to drive 100
million people into poverty by 2030. And, in March, a National Geographic study linked climate change to the conflict in Syria: "A
severe drought, worsened by a warming climate, drove Syrian farmers to abandon
their crops and flock to cities, helping trigger a civil war that has killed
hundreds of thousands of people."
The
sobering insight that climate change can accelerate violence should weigh
heavily on the minds of delegates to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change set to begin November 30 in Paris - a city that, on November 13,
suffered grievously from the blowback of the Syrian conflict. But there is
another looming threat that needs to be addressed.
Put
simply: War and militarism also fuel climate change.
From
November 30 to December 11, delegates from more than 190 nations will convene in
Paris to address the increasingly visible threats of climate disruption. The
21st Conference of the Parties (aka COP21) is expected to draw 25,000 official
delegates intent on crafting a legally binding pact to keep global warming below
2°C.
But
it is difficult to imagine the delegates reaching this goal when one of the
largest contributors to global-warming has no intention of agreeing to reduce
its pollution. The problem in this case is neither China nor the United States.
Instead, the culprit is the Pentagon.
The Pentagon's Carbon Bootprint
The
Pentagon occupies 6,000 bases in the US and more than 1,000 bases (the exact
number is disputed) in 60-plus foreign countries. According to its FY 2010 Base
Structure Report, the Pentagon's global empire includes more than 539,000
facilities at 5,000 sites covering more than 28 million acres.
The
Pentagon has admitted to burning 350,000 barrels of oil a day (only 35 countries
in the world consume more) but that doesn't include oil burned by contractors
and weapons suppliers. It does, however, include providing fuel for more than
28,000 armored vehicles, thousands of helicopters, hundreds of jet fighters and
bombers and vast fleets of Navy vessels. The Air Force accounts for about half
of the Pentagon’s operational energy consumption, followed by the Navy (33%) and
Army (15%). In 2012, oil accounted for nearly 80% of the Pentagon's energy
consumption, followed by electricity, natural gas and coal.
Ironically,
most of the Pentagon's oil is consumed in operations directed at protecting
America's access to foreign oil and maritime shipping lanes. In short, the
consumption of oil relies on consuming more oil. This is not a sustainable
energy model.
The
amount of oil burned - and the burden of smoke released - increases whenever the
Pentagon goes to war. (Indeed, human history's most combustible mix may well
prove to be oil and testosterone.) Oil Change International estimates the
Pentagon's 2003-2007 $2 trillion Iraq War generated more than three million
metric tons of CO2 pollution per month.
The Pentagon: A Privileged Polluter
Yet,
despite being the planet's single greatest institutional consumer of fossil
fuels, the Pentagon has been granted a unique exemption from reducing - or even
reporting - its pollution. The US won this prize during the 1998 Kyoto Protocol
negotiations (COP4) after the Pentagon insisted on a "national security
provision" that would place its operations beyond global scrutiny or control. As
Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat recalled: "Every requirement the
Defense Department and uniformed military who were at Kyoto by my side said they
wanted, they got." (Also exempted from pollution regulation: all Pentagon
weapons testing, military exercises, NATO operations and "peacekeeping"
missions.)
After
winning this concession, however, the US Senate refused to ratify the Kyoto
Accord, the House amended the Pentagon budget to ban any "restriction of armed
forces under the Kyoto Protocol," and George W. Bush rejected the entire climate
treaty because it "would cause serious harm to the US economy" (by which he
clearly meant the U.S. oil and gas industries).
Today,
the Pentagon consumes one percent of all the country's oil and around 80 percent
of all the oil burned by federal government. President Barack Obama recently
received praise for his Executive Order requiring federal agencies to cut
greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, but Obama's EO specifically exempted the
Pentagon from having to report its contribution to climate chaos. (As a
practical matter, the Pentagon has been forced to act. With battlefield gas
costing $400 a gallon and naval bases at risk of flooding from rising seas, the
Pentagon managed to trim its domestic greenhouse-gas emissions by 9 percent
between 2008-2012 and hopes to achieve a 34 percent reduction by 2020.)
Climate Chaos: Deception and Denial
According
to recent exposés, Exxon executives knew the company's products were stoking
global temperatures but they opted to put "profits before planet" and conspired
to secretly finance three decades of deception. Similarly, the Pentagon has been
well aware that its operations were wrecking our planetary habitat. In 2014,
Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel identified climate change as a "threat multiplier"
that will endanger national security by increasing "global instability, hunger,
poverty, and conflict." As far back as 2001, Pentagon strategists have been
preparing to capitalize on the problem by planning for "ice-free" operations in
the Arctic - in anticipation of US-Russian conflicts over access to polar
oil.
In
2014, Tom Ridge, George W. Bush's Homeland Security chief, stated flat-out that
climate change posed "a real serious problem" that "would bring destruction and
economic damage." But climate deniers in Congress continue to prevail. Ignoring
Ridge's warnings, a majority of House Republicans hammered an amendment onto the
National Defense Authorization bill that banned the Pentagon from spending any
funds on researching climate change or sustainable development. "The climate . .
. has always been changing," Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va) said dismissively.
"[W]hy should Congress divert funds from the mission of our military and
national security to support a political ideology?"
Since
1980, the US has experienced 178 "billion dollar" weather events that have
caused more than $1 trillion in damages. In 2014 alone, there were eight "billion dollar"
weather calamities.
In
September 2015, the World
Health Organization warned climate
change would claim 250,000 million lives between 2030 and 2050 at a cost of $2-4
billion a year and a study in Nature
Climate Change estimated the
economic damage from greenhouse emissions could top $326 trillion. (If the
global warming causes the permafrost to melt and release its trapped carbon
dioxide and methane gases, the economic damage could exceed $492 trillion.)
In
October 2015 (the hottest October in recorded weather history), Bloomberg Business expressed alarm over a joint study by
scientists at Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley that
predicted global warning "could cause 10 times as much damage to the global
economy as previously estimated, slashing output as much as 23 percent by the
end of the century."
This
is more than a matter of "political ideology."
The
Pentagon's role in weather disruption needs to become part of the climate
discussion. Oil barrels and gun barrels both pose a threat to our survival. If
we hope to stabilize our climate, we will need to start spending less money on
war.
GAR
SMITH
Gar Smith is editor
emeritus of Earth Island Journal, a Project Censored
award-winning investigative journalist, and co-founder of Environmentalists
Against War. He has covered revolutions in Central America and has engaged in
environmental campaigns on three continents. He lives a low-impact,
solar-assisted lifestyle in Berkeley, California. Smith is also the author
of Nuclear Roulette: The Truth About the Most Dangerous
Energy Source on Earth (Chelsea
Green Publishing, 2012)
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