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John,
The COVID-19 pandemic has utterly changed life as we know it — but it’s also laid bare how Washington’s militaristic budget priorities have left the country woefully unprepared for a crisis.
All this could be a preview of shocks to come as our climate crisis continues unabated.
Today, on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we're excited to share with you a new resource from the National Priorities Project at Institute for Policy Studies: No Warming, No War: How Militarism Fuels the Climate Crisis - And Vice Versa!
We know that the U.S. has invested in the Pentagon over and above all other priorities — and we know that the Pentagon has been crucial to propping up the fossil fuel economy and perpetuating aggression in the name of free-flowing oil.
It's way past time to break the chain. We put together this report for advocates to help lay out how militarism and the climate crisis are deeply intertwined and mutually reinforcing — and show how a Just Transition can demilitarize our economy while moving us away from fossil fuels.
Among our key findings are these:
- The Pentagon is the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum. Just one of the military’s jets, the B-52 stratocruiser, consumes about as much fuel in an hour as the average car driver uses in seven years.
- Up to half of all interstate wars since 1973 have been linked to oil. And all over the world, those who fight to protect their lands from extractive industries are often met with state and paramilitary violence.
- Around 200 million people may be displaced by the middle of century due to climate change. As the U.S. continues to ramp up border security, so do threats to all people’s freedom to move and stay.
- Over-investment in the military comes at the high cost of under-investing in other needs, including climate. Compared to the $6.4 trillion spent on war in the past two decades, the cost of shifting the U.S. power grid to 100% renewable is an estimated $4.5 trillion.
We hope you’ll find the lessons from this report useful in your advocacy.
True climate solutions, we argue, must have antimilitarism at their core. And demilitarization will go a long way toward winning a green future for us all.
In the face of both COVID-19 and the climate crisis, we urgently need to shift from an extractive economy of war to a regenerative culture of care.
Help us spread the word about this project, on Earth Day and beyond!
Check out our social media toolkit for facts & graphics to share.
Or just take a moment to amplify this critical resource from NPP's Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
If our current times have taught us anything, it's that our national priorities have failed to account for what really matters — for human health and security, for international cooperation over conflict, and for a just distribution of resources.
We're experiencing a global and national wake-up call to pay attention to what really matters, and you're a critical part of the collective solution that we're building together.
In solidarity,
Lindsay, Lorah, Ashik, and the NPP team at IPS
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