By Gabriel Mangano
The world’s single largest consumer of petroleum—and therefore the largest polluter on the planet — is the US. Department of Defense (DoD).
To secure control over the world’s oil, U.S. capitalists have created the largest, most destructive army in world history. They have used this army to overthrow elected governments and destabilize others, even wrecking whole regions at the cost of millions of lives and untold environmental destruction. Ironically, to seize control of this oil, the capitalists have built an army almost entirely dependent on oil, the energy resource most responsible for global warming.
The DoD is the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases and uses more oil each day than the total usage of 175 countries. It produces more climate pollution than most countries and totals 80% of the US Government consumption. In fact, the DoD burns through more than 144 million barrels of oil annually. That does not include their allies’ forces, military contractors, and fuel consumed to make weaponry, all in pursuit of more oil. This criminal activity has been kept under cover; the US made sure, at the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, that fossil fuel emissions from the military were excluded from regulatory oversight. Add to this the environmental destruction from 18 years of endless war and criminal regime change. The results have been disastrous.
In Afghanistan, 18 years of war have left 111,000 killed including 30 pine nut farmers massacred in a mid-September drone strike which they call “collateral damage”. Besides the release of millions of tons of CO2, environmental devastation includes deforestation and the release of toxic pollutants like arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury from open fire pits for the burning of trash.
In Iraq the situation has been more devastating with 400 millions tons of CO2 released to date. Iraqis have also suffered from the U.S. use of depleted uranium that has created elevated rates of cancer and crippling birth defects. After U.S. attacks in Fallujah, residents suffer “the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied”. And the U.S. is still using depleted uranium in Syria, despite saying it would desist. The genocidal use of uranium and biological and chemical weapons repeats the crimes of the imperialist war against Vietnam.
We also must consider the environmental destruction caused by the over 900 US military bases around the world from trash burning to defoliates to chemical toxins to drone strikes. Almost nowhere is safe from the destruction wrought by the DoD. The DoD is the largest purveyor of poisonous toxins like Agent Orange, napalm, and nuclear waste. Around 70% of environmental EPA Superfund sites were caused by the DoD.
We are at a significant juncture in human history, and the survival of humanity is clearly at stake. We know the Democratic Party will not save us and that even so-called socialists in Congress voted for the military budget. Workers and environmental fighters are building a movement and learning that the U.S. military was not created to defend us but is in fact the enemy of workers and oppressed people the world over. More and more, we see that to sustain human life on the planet, to foster life in harmony with all living things, it is necessary to fight against the U.S. imperialist army and its allies if we want real environmental justice.