The elephant in Paris – guns and greenhouse gases | Global Justice Now
Nick Buxton introduces the theme of an upcoming London talk on 25
November sponsored by Global Justice Now that will launch a new book, The Secure and the Dispossessed -How the Military and Corporations are shaping a climate-changed world
There is no shortage of words in the latest negotiating document for
the UN climate negotiations taking place in Paris at the end of November
– 32,731 words to be precise and counting. Yet strangely there is one
word you won’t find: military. It’s a strange omission, given that the
US military alone is the single largest user of petroleum in the world
and has been the main enforcer of the global oil economy for decades.
The history of how the military disappeared
from any carbon accounting ledgers goes back to the UN climate talks in
1997 in Kyoto. Under pressure from military generals and foreign
policy hawks opposed to any potential restrictions on US military power,
the US negotiating team succeeded in securing exemptions for the
military from any required reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Even
though the US then proceeded not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the
exemptions for the military stuck for every other signatory nation. Even
today, the reporting each country is required to make to the UN on
their emissions excludes any fuels purchased and used overseas by the
military.
As a result it is still difficult to calculate the exact
responsibility of the world’s military forces for greenhouse gas
emissions. A US Congressional report in 2012 said that the Department of
Defense consumed about 117 million barrels of oil in 2011, only a
little less than all the petrol and diesel use of all cars in Britain
the same year. Deploying that oil across the globe to the fuel-greedy
hummers, jets and drones has become a growing preoccupation of NATO
military strategists.
But the responsibility of the military for the climate crisis goes
much further than their own use of fossil fuels. As we witnessed in
Iraq, the military, the arms corporations and their many powerful
political supporters have consistently relied on (and aggressively
pushed for) armed intervention to secure oil and energy supplies. The
military is not just a prolific user of oil, it is one of the central
pillars of the global fossil-fuel economy. Today whether it is in the
Middle East, the Gulf, or the Pacific, modern-day military deployment is
about controlling oil-rich regions and defending the key shipping
supply routes that carry half the world’s oil and sustain our consumer
economy.
The resulting expansion of conflict across the globe has consumed
ever-increasing levels of military expenditure: in 2014, global military
expenditure reached $1.8 trillion dollars. This money is a huge
diversion of public resources that could be invested instead in
renewable energy as well as providing support for those most affected by
climate change. When the UK government in 2014 allocates £25 billion to
the Ministry of Defence but only £1.5 billion to the Department of
Energy & Climate Change, it is clear where its priorities lie.
