The Climate Crisis Under the Microscope - Part Three: How the American Obsession with ‘Defense’ and Imperialism is Killing the Planet and More People Than We Know

Opinion Policy Analysis by Roa Daher, Featured Writer

April 30th, 2021

The United States’ position as one of the top polluters of the planet has been well-known for years now, and the widely-expressed dismay at Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Climate Agreement was quickly replaced by jubilation as Biden returned to the Agreement. President Biden even made some bold promises at the recent Earth Day Climate Summit, like a commitment to halving emissions by 2030 (compared to the recorded 2005 levels). While this move was highly applauded as a commitment to reversing climate change, the Biden administration did not mention any plans to reduce the emissions and immense pollution caused by the US military. 

Interestingly, the emissions of the American military are not included within the calculations of the country’s carbon footprint because on how difficult it is to get quantifiable information about the Pentagon’s emissions across different US government departments. Multiple studies confirm that the United States Armed Forces are one of the largest polluters in history, consuming enormous amounts of oil and leaving a path of environmental ruin in its wake. In fact, if the US military was a country, only its fuel usage would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases. The Pentagon is a bigger polluter than approximately 140 countries, and yet, until its recent re-entering of the Paris Agreement, it received an exemption from reporting and reducing its emissions. This exemption came as a result of the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed by the Bush Administration, even though it was never ratified and thus never really came into effect. Thus, the United States’ commitment to protecting the environment does not stand a chance against its commitment to the ‘War on Terror’.

Just earlier this month, President Biden requested a whopping $715 billion for his first Pentagon budget, which is actually a 0.4% decrease from this year’s $704 billion budget when adjusted for inflation. Nonetheless, when considering the massive environmental destruction caused by the Department of  Defense’s activities both in the United States and abroad, this is far from enough, especially with talk of the Green New Deal and worries about how it will be funded. The United States commitment to the environment cannot be held simultaneously with its commitment to imperialism and the American global ‘War on Terror’.

The extent of the harm that the US military has done to the environment runs much deeper than the estimated 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases released since the beginning of the ‘War on Terror’ in 2001, and it extends beyond the land of the United States to the many countries with American military bases. As of 2015, there were close to 800 military bases in over 70 countries, which is far more military bases than any other country has.

Through these military bases, the Pentagon has generated more hazardous waste than the top five US chemical companies combined. The simplest example of this was the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, which had health impacts that spanned three generations, including birth defects, stillbirths, and cancer rates that were associated with exposure to the chemicals present in Agent Orange that remain persistent in the soil decades after being sprayed. In Iraq, the US military’s policies and actions transformed Iraq from a food exporter to a country facing the desertification of 90% of its lands. The United States’ nuclear testing in the American Southwest, the Marshall Islands, and the South Pacific Islands has caused extremely high rates of cancer in the population while contaminating the land and water with traces of radiation.

It is known that israel is given billions of dollars by the United States in aid, only for israel to use that money to limit Palestinians’ access to clean water and pollute the land, water, and air; putting the health of Palestinians at risk. Even on the soil of the United States, the very soil the Pentagon swears to protect, US military bases are extremely contaminated and slowly harm and kill the people living in them; the very land they swore to protect kills them. The Department of Defense has 141 Superfund sites, meaning 141 military bases have been so polluted that they qualify for state-funded clean up grants to try minimizing the damage. No other polluters have this many sites.

The head of the Pentagon’s environmental programs states that there are around 39,000 polluted sites that they deal with. The Navy, which is only one of the military’s branches, released documents in 2015 that they would be releasing 20,000 tons of heavy metals into the oceans. Heavy metals are very dangerous pollutants that would severely compromise water quality and affect marine life in unprecedented ways; in humans, exposure to heavy metals imposes neurological, muscular, and developmental negative health impacts. At very high levels, exposure can even be fatal.

The very big issue with the mere scale of the destruction that the United States military leaves in its path, is not only its unaddressed impact on the climate crisis, but also the long-term effects it has on human health. As the US sets up military bases in other countries, and as it intervenes in other countries, causing the deaths of millions as seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, it also slowly kills those who survive with the ruinous remains that are left behind. Since humans are part of the environment, and part of intricate systems much larger than themselves, it is important to know that pollution of land and water and the incessant, and only increasing, emission of greenhouse gases has major effects on biodiversity and wildlife that we are seeing right now.

Hubs of biodiversity that deserve preservation, like the Great Barrier Reef and the Amazon Rainforest, and all the organisms that occupy them, are suffering the consequences of human actions.

There cannot be a response to the climate crisis that does not address imperialism and capitalism, and their effects on the Earth.