As I write, New York City is an unsettling 70 degrees in November. Meanwhile, a cohort of war profiteers, their pockets lined by the very industries destroying our climate, are flying to COP, the annual U.N. climate summit hosted by a petrostate, no less. They\u2019re gathering to \u201cdiscuss climate solutions\u201d \u2013 but one of the world\u2019s biggest contributors to the climate crisis will be entirely overlooked: the U.S. military-industrial complex.<\/p>\n
The world\u2019s largest institutional emitter, the U.S. military, sits beyond the reach of the metrics meant to hold countries accountable for climate pollution. Exempt from transparency requirements at the COP or within U.N. climate agreements, the military sector is, in fact, the leading institutional driver of the climate crisis. It burns through fossil fuels on a scale that surpasses entire nations while waging wars that destroy lives, communities, and the land itself. It\u2019s a deliberate omission, one meant to hide the environmental and social costs of militarism from view.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Leading the U.S. delegation to COP is John Podesta \u00a0\u2013 \u00a0a career defender of militarism, a lobbyist who has worked to fortify the very military establishment poisoning our air, water, and land. Now, he arrives in the conference halls of COP wrapped in a cloak of environmentalism. Yet, as long as he skirts around the elephant in the room, no amount of recycled paper or energy-efficient lighting at COP will address the core driver of the climate crisis. If Podesta ignores the environmental impact of U.S. militarism, he\u2019ll be dooming us.<\/p>\n
For those of us directly feeling the crisis, there\u2019s no question that the U.S. Empire\u2019s military machine is central to our climate emergency. Appalachians living through floods and those of us in New York watching temperatures soar out of season are witnesses to the toll. And yet we watch as our leaders, claiming to care about climate, push forward with policies and budgets that only deepen our climate emergency.<\/p>\n
In the past year alone, the war on Gaza has been a horrifying example of militarism\u2019s environmental toll. Entire communities were leveled under the firepower of U.S.-funded bombs. In just two months, emissions from these military activities equaled the yearly carbon output of more than 20 countries combined. This violence bleeds beyond borders. U.S. police forces train with the Israeli military, and they\u2019ll soon bring their war tactics to Atlanta\u2019s Cop City, where a training center is planned on sacred Indigenous land. Militarism is woven into every facet of our society \u00a0\u2013 \u00a0taking lives, razing homes, and desecrating land \u00a0\u2013 \u00a0all while stoking climate disaster.<\/p>\n
This crisis can\u2019t be solved by those who are its architects. It can\u2019t be fixed by Podesta\u2019s well-crafted speeches or the administration\u2019s empty pledges. The Biden administration just passed one of the largest military budgets in history, pumping more dollars \u00a0\u2013 \u00a0and more carbon emissions \u00a0\u2013 \u00a0into the climate catastrophe. Each weapon shipped, each tank deployed, is an environmental crime in the making, one funded by American tax dollars. We can\u2019t ignore this fact as COP progresses and climate talks fall short yet again.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to despair in the face of such unaccountable power. But in times of crisis, clarity can become a weapon. We must expose the truth that militarism is antithetical to climate justice. True climate solutions don\u2019t come from polite panel discussions led by those who wield the tools of destruction. They come from radical honesty and demands for accountability. They come from a commitment to ending the empire choking our planet and communities. And they come from a shared goal of mutual liberation that doesn\u2019t ignore the plight of the many to serve the few.<\/p>\n
The cost of militarism is clear, and its environmental toll demands our fiercest opposition. This COP, let\u2019s not let the elephant in the room fade into the background. It\u2019s time for those responsible for our climate crisis \u2013 the war machines, the lobbyists, and the industries that back them \u2013 to be held accountable. For our survival and for each other, we must demand climate justice that tells the truth.<\/p>\n
Aaron Kirshenbaum is CODEPINK’s War is Not Green Campaigner and East Coast Regional Organizer. Based in, and originally from Brooklyn, NY, Aaron holds an M.A. in Community Development and Planning from Clark University. They also hold a B.A. in Human-Environmental and Urban-Economic Geography from Clark. During their time in school, Aaron worked on internationalist climate justice organizing and educational program development, as well as Palestine, tenant, and abolitionist organizing.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Melissa Garriga is the communications and media analysis manager for CODEPINK. She writes about the intersection of militarism and the human cost of war. Based in Mississippi, Melissa holds a B.A. in Public Relations from Tulane University.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I write, New York City is an unsettling 70 degrees in November. Meanwhile, a cohort of war profiteers, their pockets lined by the very industries destroying our climate, are flying to COP, the annual U.N. climate summit hosted by a petrostate, no less. They\u2019re gathering to \u201cdiscuss climate solutions\u201d \u2013 but one of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":644,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-50003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Let\u2019s Demand Accountability at COP"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/644"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50003"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50031,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50003\/revisions\/50031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50003"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=50003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}