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A ‘Green’ War Machine Is Still a War Machine: The U.S. Military’s Environmental Blind Spot

Helicopter over a snowy landscape
An Air Force HH-60G Pave Hawk performs a helicopter air-to-air refueling with a Marine Corps KC-130J during a training exercise at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson, Alaska, Dec. 17, 2024. Photo by Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Moses Lopez Franco.

By Cornelius Raff, Associate and BVS volunteer at the Office of Peacebuilding and Policy

In today’s world, we continue to find ourselves increasingly exposed to news of war and armed conflict of one kind or another. Simultaneously, it is the reality of the global presence of the U.S. army that unavoidably connects us both politically and morally to international conflicts. Typically, ethical and political conversations about war and international conflicts revolve around human suffering and destruction induced by the use of lethal weaponry. While this may be the most obvious and horrific causation in the context of war, we pay very little attention to another but less obvious threat-multiplier that is deeply ingrained in modern-day warfare and particularly instituted by the U.S. military: the military’s destruction of the environment. 

First, it’s important to look at some of the mind blowing numbers: Militaries around the globe are responsible for over 5.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions according to the independent U.K.-based research institute, Conflict and Environment Observatory. And, since the U.S. military until this present day reserves the position of the most potent and highest-funded military force globally, its contribution to these emissions is more than significant, if not the vast majority.

The Brown University’s Cost of War project estimated total greenhouse gas emissions by the U.S. Department of Defense for the 2018 fiscal year were about 56 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent. While only a small portion of U.S. total emissions, U.S. military emissions are, in any year, larger than the emissions of many countries. According to the research by Brown University, the Pentagon would rank as the world’s 55th largest CO2 emitter if it was its own country, emitting more than entire industrialized nations like Hungary or Portugal. Thus, making the U.S. Armed Forces the largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels in the world. In addition to the magnitude of its emissions, the U.S. military also has a record of polluting waters and devastating land through nuclear testing and foreign interventions. Both have reportedly resulted in severe decade-long and long-lasting damage on whole populations and entire ecosystems, causing thousands of deaths through life-threatening diseases, a loss of biodiversity and have accelerated desertification.

So what do we make of this now? 

The Church of the Brethren throughout its history has continuously called out the harm and human suffering resulting from war and has firmly criticized foreign U.S. military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 1970, the church had already further affirmed that we cannot encourage, engage in, or willingly profit from armed conflict at home or abroad. On the other hand, the church in 2018 identified the effects of climate change as “threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions—conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.”

Subsequently, the church concluded that the consumption of fossil fuels is inherently incompatible with the call to care for our neighbors as is the destructive nature of our military- because of its consistent devastation of both human life and our planet.

However, in a historic attempt to boost its environmental record and in part in acknowledgement to the global urgency of environmental sustainability, the U.S. military in 2022 released a rigorous “climate strategy”. The paper states that “if the Army invests in modernization, readiness, and operations, we can create the land forces that our nation needs today while securing a sustainable, cleaner tomorrow.” Furthermore, it outlines the three targets to achieve this alleged goal are to install a microgrid on every base by 2035, reduce net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030 by 50 percent (compared to 2005) and produce net zero energy by 2050. What sound like ambitious goals to drastically slash emissions, tackle climate change and protect our planet and vulnerable communities, is in fact fundamentally a perverse distortion of reality.

Sustainability in this context, is dangerously abused for the sake of maintaining and greenwashing an industry that for decades has inflicted a long-lasting destruction on communities and the environment through its operating nature. Ensuring its effective and sustainable operation is partly only the acknowledgment that the future of energy security lies in renewable energy. Environmental sustainability in this context means to modernize a global military force. 

Decarbonizing, essentially modernizing a global military force may make its operations and installations less polluting but not less harmful.

It has to concern us and needs to be pushed into public dialogue.

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