Remarks by Maureen Aumand at Earth Day Events on April 22, 2015
Whenever we gather to express our deep and common concern for the sustainability of our beloved
Mother Earth, there is a very large elephant in the room which must always be acknowledged and be
made part of the conversation. That elephant is the behemoth of militarism which has grown large,
fed on our need and desire for fossil fuel and the state of constant war readiness and war making
which this hunger has created.
Militarism and War.
During the past century, we have been driven by our commitment to a fossil fuel economy and the
swollen power of the enabling military/ industrial/ congressional complex into a perverse, tail chasing
cycle of end game lunacy. We have come to conflate our national security with fossil fuel security and
access and in so doing; we have let the beast run amuck.
When we look clearly at this fossil fuel guzzling, pollution spewing, resource thieving, profit
mongering beast, it becomes clear why our love of planet and our search for an energy policy that will
sustain it, must be married to an active opposition to a national foreign policy framed by a
commitment to war, that is, by far the most oil exhaustive activity on the planet.
Let me share a few details to underscore why this is so:



The US DOD is the largest institutional consumer of fossil fuel on the planet.
With as many as 1000 bases outside the US and 6000 facilities at home, the Do D is estimated
to use - when all aspects of its facilities and operations are calculated - up to a million barrels
of oil a day.
There are only 35 countries in the world consuming more oil that the US DOD
Where does all of this fuel go?
Consider:
 The projected costs of the Iraq war alone - 3 trillion dollars with a hefty total of that for both the
use of as well as the protection and delivery of fuel.
 This 3 trillion would have covered ALL of the global investments needed in renewable power
generated between the war's onset and 2030 to reverse global warming trends
Or in a smaller scale:
 1 M1 Abrams tank burns 250 gallons of fuel per hour
 Or a B52 bomber uses 500 gallons of fuel a minute (10 minutes of flight uses as much fuel as
the average driver in one year)
 Or the F-4 Phantom Fighter burns more than 1600 gallons of jet fuel per hour and when flying
at supersonic speeds can burn as much as 14,400 gallons per hour
Just this little bit makes it clear, does it not, that this is madness: this expending of so much fossil fuel
in order to protect our doomed to fail fossil fuel economy?
However, there is more that has to be looked at:
The DOD has been called the single largest institutional polluter and emitter of greenhouse gases on
the planet.
Estimates indicate that it alone produces 5% of all current global climate pollution, this one institution
funded by our tax dollars.
Consider: Between 2003-2007 the Iraq War generated 141 million metric tons of CO2 … more
annually than for 139 of the world's countries for each of those years.
Or in 2012, one year, the DOD emitted, exclusive of contractor emissions, 70 million metric tons of
CO2.
Or that many military bases top the Superfund lists of the most polluted places in the nation
In fact, there are analysts who estimate that 1 out of every 10 Americans lives within 10 miles of a
military use related site listed as a priority cleanup site.
A 2005 UN report estimates that 4 million pounds of radioactive dust from DU settled over the deserts
and cities of Iraq.
The DOD produces more waste than the 5 largest chemical companies combined.
But here is the painful kicker, even as it contributes mightily to speed climate change, the US DOD
has been exempted from accounting for any greenhouse emissions in all international agreements.
Here is a loophole you could drive...well an elephant through if he wasn't hiding in the middle of the
room!
Even as the Pentagon itself says that climate change is a greater global threat than terrorism, even
as the Pentagon calls climate change a threat multiplier and projects and build strategies ...yes
military, resource guzzling strategies ...to confront the human dislocation, suffering, and unrest which
they anticipate will result from climate change, the United States Defense Department continues to
spend more than the next 45 nations combined of our tax dollars on war and preparation for war.
Part of the picture that emerges of this looming beast in our midst is that of opportunities lost,
opportunities to seek, fund and build life enhancing, future ensuring alternative solutions to climate
change, opportunities to reverse the effects of our run amuck choices, lost, drained away,
squandered in a death spiral which feeds, funds, and celebrates war and militarism in the name of
profit and in the embrace of a status quo doomed to fail energy policy.
As we call for an alternative policy let us understand that that also requires that we call for a
redirection of our military spending, the very dismantling of the system which creates the feedback
loop between war making and global warming. That we demand that the elephant be neutered.
I am wearing a scarf that was made by Afghan women and which in Pashtun reads: No Boundaries.
May we all live together in peace, under one radiantly blue sky, together in solidarity on our lovely
blue green planet.
NO WAR! NO WARMING!