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US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries
- Roxo 7y agoSurprise, surprise, the military-industrial complex is destroying our planet. How people can still support this is beyond me.
- tim333 7y agoThere are still a few questionable non democratic countries out there that may make it worth keeping a military so as to keep them in check. Russia, China, Iran and the like.
- izacus 7y agoAnd destroying the whole planet with pollution of the most expensive army in the world is going to help this how?
- leaveyou 7y agoWhen was the last time the "people" were asked if they agree with the size of their country's army ? EDIT: we agree to disagree but my impression is that when it comes to army and security services the tail is wagging the dog almost everywhere - not only in US. Any congressman can be presented with classified information which with the right interpretation can justify basically anything and the said congressman will simply ignore the public will.
- bkohlmann 7y agoAt least in the US, every 2 years. Congress funds the military and determines its size.
- brlewis 7y agoJust to close the loop on this and connect back to "the people": Congress funds the military. The military funds large corporations. Large corporations fund congressional election campaigns. And "the people" base their votes off of campaigns.
- zip1234 7y agoCongress wants to fund the military, especially when their are bases in their own state. That means lots of dollars taken from elsewhere in the country and spent in their state.
- Voloskaya 7y agoHow is this different than any other topic? People get asked their opinion on this every time they are asked to go to vote. Support candidate that aren't promoting an isolationist and/or world police agenda for example.
- CalRobert 7y agoEvery election when they choose to support candidates who have stated policies regarding the military, really.
- cf141q5325 7y agoIn a defacto two party system with both parties agreeing in general that a large military is needed and see interventions to topple governments as a time honored tradition.
- clarkmoody 7y agoSpoken as if the establishment doesn't actively pick which candidates the people get to "choose" from.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mc32 7y agoI think you have to balance that against not preventing instability around the world. What would it look like if China, Russia, Iran and many others were unchecked and we let them do whatever they wanted... Now, the current admin is cutting back on involvement. Some candidates call for more interventionism. That we’re retreating from “our duty” to be international police, essentially. So what is it?
- ssijak 7y agoI think you are living inside a big bubble. When was the last time China showed military aggresion outside its borders, especialy on the other side of the world? US doing the “checking” around the world left countless people dead for nothing, and a lot of countries ruined. Not to mention trillions od dollars spent on financing that. US complain about Russia meddling with US elections (through 150k worth of Facebook ads lol) but then proceeds to overturn number of democratically elected governments around the world. Hipocracry much?
- spoovy 7y agoChina is constantly showing aggression in the South China sea, outside of it's borders. Amazing how people can post with such confidence on something they clearly know literally nothing about.
- griffinkelly 7y agoChina is showing force against Taiwan: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3004049/taiwan-blasts-china-reckless-and-provocative-fighter-jet https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3004049/tai... China is building islands all around the South China Sea: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2133483/china-has-built-seven-new-military-bases-south-china https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/21... China now has a presence in Africa too: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/africa/pentagon-accuses-chinese-blinding-djibouti-based-u-s-pilots-lasers-n871096 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/africa/pentagon-accuses-chinese...
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- readme 7y agoI'm sure Russia and China would love if we dialed it back a bit! Of course, then our pollution will just be displaced by theirs. Then, if we all do it, aliens will arrive and they'll pollute the planet when they destroy us. I know a lot of people think aliens would have sufficiently advanced technology, that we'd be defenseless. I'm not so sure about that. We have nuclear weapons...
- martin_a 7y agoYou really need to get yourself checked.
- ryanmercer 7y ago>How people can still support this is beyond me. Because it prevents foreign troops from attempting to land on U.S. soil and attack us, it also gives us means to take most air and ocean-based attacks out long before they get near the continental United States. With the exception of 9/11 (which wasn't actually military but does seem to have been state-sponsored to some degree), we've gone the better part of 2 centuries without hostile military action on the continental United States. Because it has provided jobs for many of us and our families. My mother retired from DoD, I have no less than 2-dozen friends that served in Afghanistan and/or Iraq and many more that are/were guard/reserve, my aunt's husband retired from the USAF and then went to work as a contractor for them, one of my half-brothers was in the Navy and even served on a sub, one of my aunts was USCG reserve, from my grandfathers (Army Air Corp, Navy) back we've fought in every single war since the War of Independence, my godfather was Navy UDT, the guy I owe my sobriety to is a purple heart carrying 18D. Several members of my Lodge are veterans, several members of my Ward are members, several people in my office are veterans or are married to them, the founder of my company that employs 425k people is a Vietnam-vet Marine and a lot of our pilots are former military. Several of my friends were able to get college educations thanks to the military, my mother's father had multiple heart surgeries over the years thanks to the VA, etc etc. Because space exploration, GPS and literally every other type of satellite our civilization relies upon, effectively all nuclear technologies (power, medicine), advanced prosthetics, handheld radios, RADAR, airliners, digital photography, the internet, etc etc so on and so forth are all direct results of technologies developed by various branches of the U.S., and foreign, military branches? I mean, without the U.S. military, you wouldn't even have safe and reliable ocean shipping. The United States Navy and United States Coast Guard patrol international shipping lanes and are the largest deterrent to piracy (which is a multi-billion dollar economic loss annually)
- ionised 7y agoIt's as if people don't consider Generals Smedley D. Butler and Dwight D. Eisenhower as authorities on the subject when they warned against the racket of the military-industrial complex. It's depressing and utterly pathetic that we refuse to listen to wise words because our primitive monkey feelings don't jive with the advice they gave.
- gerytu 7y agoOur true enemies are our governments. They exist because we give them power. We give them power because they teach us to fear.
- ecmascript 7y agoI always have wondered how people calculate pollution from countries. I mean, that must be from data gathered from the government? For countries/governments that doesn't even have or have a very limited garbage disposal, that must mean they pollute very little on paper when in reality people just throw stuff into the ground / ocean etc. I don't really believe this article. It seems like a typical clickbait shit article actually. Pollution is not only how much CO2 you release into the air, just look at some rivers in India which are incredibly polluted or countries in Africa where people simply burn metal in hunt for rare metals which they can sell. That pollution is probably not included in this statistic which makes me call bullshit on this claim.
- antoineMoPa 7y agoDirty rivers suck, but humanity's big problem right now is global warming.
- czechdeveloper 7y agoWell, we face multitude of issues. For example loss of biodiversity is likely as important as global warming.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Voloskaya 7y agoLoss of biodiversity is in big part caused by global warming (temperature rising, ocean acidification etc.) Global warming is not caused by loss of biodiversity. On top of that, many of things that need to be done to reduce global warming will directly positively affect biodiversity, such as reducing deforestation and thus habitat loss. So no, fixing global warming is more important since its a prerequisite to stopping loss of biodiversity.
- cfv 7y agoThe problem is we're making the single world we can live in poisonous unstable and dead through short term unsustainable growth, violence and greed. Maybe we can spare a few murder machines for the Imperial army until we figure out how to stop choking the planet to our collective toxic, entirely preventable deaths?
- Bucephalus355 7y agoThis kind of research is well documented to be funded by foreign governments. The US Military night very well pollute an extraordinary amount, but such funding will mean we never get the emissions down in other countries and this has to be a global effort. The House Committee on Natural Resources has already sent several letters [1] to groups like the National Resource Defense Council asking why they have whitepapers on their website significantly praising the Chinese fishing industry, probably the most exploitative fishing operation in the world right now. Also what I thought was interesting was that the NRDF has never filed a single complaint with the Chinese Navy for use of their sonar around whales while filing hundreds against the US Navy. To be fair though, if I was a foreign government I would be doing this for sure to the US (also I’d push any general policy I thought might be a poor choice long term). Of course the United States almost certainly engages in this behavior too, but we have to acknowledge what is going on here. [1] https://dailycaller.com/2018/06/05/congress-environmental-groups-ties-to-china/ https://dailycaller.com/2018/06/05/congress-environmental-gr...
- RobertoG 7y agoYour post confused me. I though you were saying that this report was to be suspicious because is coming from an organization that maybe have ties to China. But it seems this report have nothing to do with that organization, but with some European universities. So, what are you saying? that the report is right but 'maybe' it was funded by another country because you don't like it?
- SiempreViernes 7y agoUltimately I doubt it matters very much to OP exactly how you interpret it, as long as you don't think about the climate crisis.
- rat9988 7y agoThe real question, is why for our very own military industry, we never have studied it. Why did we need others to fund it?
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
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- delingpole 7y agoI always liked this Clickhole piece on military/environmental issues: 5 Ways ISIS Can Reduce Its Carbon Footprint "As ISIS continues to expand its operations in the Middle East, it is more urgent than ever for this group to enact sustainable policies that will have the least impact on our environment. Here are some expert tips to help the Islamic State go green! Requiring cars to stop at a military checkpoint leads to fuel inefficiency and idling engines, especially if an ISIS agent has to search the vehicle. Limiting checkpoints to one every 20 miles provides similar security with significantly lower emissions!" https://news.clickhole.com/5-ways-isis-can-reduce-its-carbon-footprint-1825123209 https://news.clickhole.com/5-ways-isis-can-reduce-its-carbon...
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y agoHoly shit, that is hilarious
- yourcousinbilly 7y agoThe Onion did it better in 2008: "North Korea has one of the largest armies in the world, but they save consumption by simply not feeding them" "Truly elegant in its simplicity" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvz_xzaMvCQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvz_xzaMvCQ
- ThomPete 7y agoOne thing that is always missing from these discussions is the whole picture. You have to factor the pros and the cons in any situation. This kind of headlines and focus only focuses on the negatives with regards but forget to ask why we have a military, to begin with and what the cost would be if we didn't. A much healthier approach IMO is to look at how we can improve energy production in general as that's at the heart of things here. And once we look at that we will quickly realize that we are already looking at that but finding out it's not as easy to improve the way we currently use energy as people might want it to be. But then again that wouldn't create as many clicks. Somehow that underlying reality is lost on a surprising amount of people. Our relatively wealthy, safe, modern lives with all the bells and whistles and freedoms we in the west take for granted, only is possible because it ultimately sits on top of military dominance that allows us to secure acccess to the proper resources and gives us negotiation power.
- ladyattis 7y agoThe thing I take away from these discussions is that the military is covering for a greater failing of our own civilian governments which constantly refuse to do their job in terms of diplomacy. Instead, we just build bigger sticks in place of more cleverly employed carrots as it were. If we were rational actors we'd employ economic measures which would be many times more effective than an atomic bomb. But as I said, that's assuming we were rational actors.
- tudorconstantin 7y agoWe should go and force them to reduce it /s
- spoovy 7y ago"If the US military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, sitting between Peru and Portugal." Hmm. Not quite as attention grabbing as the headline. There couldn't be an ulterior motive for this article now could there..?
- LeifCarrotson 7y agoUS Military is a bigger insert topic here than as many as insert large number here countries. Whether that topic is economics, or employees, or technology, or any other metric you want to analyze...the US military is large. Edit: It would be more interesting to compare pollution from the military vs other countries or other militaries as a function of their size. Similar problems often arise when comparing states - it's unsurprising when California is the largest and Wyoming is the smallest; please normalize your data! For example, the US military budget of ~$650B is comparable to the GDP of Switzerland or Saudi Arabia, or alternatively comparable to the GDP of the ~80 smallest countries. That 80 country GDP vs 140 country pollution difference is already more illuminating to me...
- flexie 7y agoActually, I find it surprisingly small when considering how powerful it is. In terms of men (2.2M active and reserve), combat tanks (6,300), artillery (1,700), war ships (130), submarines (70) and fighter planes (2,400) it’s dwarfed by militaries of the past. Of course the firepower is much larger nowadays and nuclear weapons also make conventional military play a different role, and the US military - although engaged in several conflicts around the world - is mostly a peace time force, but I still find it amazing that the armies of the WWII era were so much larger.
- steve19 7y agoOther countries with large armies tend to throw poorly trained, and in the case of NK, poorly fed conscripts at the problem. The US regularly fights wars so the troops are not only well trained but there is a lot of individual and institutional experience.
- azernik 7y ago> Other countries with large armies tend to throw poorly trained, and in the case of NK, poorly fed conscripts at the problem. This is a strange mischaracterization of Israel's and South Korea's militaries, which are two of the largest in proportion to population in the world. Other countries with large armies don't have to pay for the enormous logistical tail the US uses to deploy worldwide, and the unique readiness levels and naval/air capabilities required to do so on reasonable notice.
- mms1973 7y agoThis article focuses on carbon. CO2 is not "pollution" but a fundamental part of our atmosphere. CO2 is the basic food of plants. It is complete rubbish that CO2 levels have any link whatsoever with earth temperature. The main factor in earth temperature is solar activity on which humans have ZERO control of.
- Proven 7y agoThat's the least of problems with the US military forces. Of course they pollute more than 140 countries noone has ever heard of. Just to make sure the article is as ludicrous as I thought it would be, I clicked on the link and read it: > The money spent procuring and distributing fuel across the US empire could instead be spent as a peace dividend, helping to fund a Green New Deal in whatever form it might take. Fix: give us those taxpayer monies and let us spend it all, down to last penny. Call it Green Plunder, not Peace Dividend.
- easymodex 7y agoHow about the USA rather starts a military intervention in whichever country is destroying the environment the most. Fighting for a habitable planet for all mankind sounds like a better idea than fighting for oil, no?
- Fjolsvith 7y agoBy the looks of it, it would probably be in India or China. [1] 1. https://waqi.info/ https://waqi.info/
- aasasd 7y agoFrom what I've heard, container ships with their super shitty fuel may dwarf the pollution of the entire automotive fleet and probably plenty of industries. Then, a good bet would be to assail the country that contributes the most to consumerism. As a bonus, this would take out a large portion of the Southeast Asia pollution.
- griffinkelly 7y agoI think it's worth noting that many of the vehicles, ships, airplanes used now by the US military were designed in the 80s, and the last thing on the mind of the engineers were carbon emissions. Hopefully, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman etc. start thinking about this stuff in the future. Interestingly at one point, the US Navy wanted to go all nuclear. That would have helped carbon emissions. https://www.wearethemighty.com/gear-tech/navy-nuclear-power-cruiser-destroyer?rebelltitem=4#rebelltitem4 https://www.wearethemighty.com/gear-tech/navy-nuclear-power-...
- ryantgtg 7y agoThere are also some extreme double standards within these organizations. On the one hand, the Navy has ambitious and impressive sustainability goals. And on the other hand, the Navy reportedly (I've heard this anecdotally from friends in the Navy) straight up dumps all the trash from their air craft carriers and ships into the ocean. Also anecdotally - but maybe someone with closer knowledge can corroborate - army divisions (?) want to maintain their budgets from cycle to cycle, and to do so they need to prove that they _need_ that money. I have heard that the Air Force, as an example, will rapidly spend down their budgets at the end of a budget cycle by dropping jet fuel and firing off missiles willy nilly.
- 0xffff2 7y ago>Also anecdotally - but maybe someone with closer knowledge can corroborate - army divisions (?) want to maintain their budgets from cycle to cycle, and to do so they need to prove that they _need_ that money. I have heard that the Air Force, as an example, will rapidly spend down their budgets at the end of a budget cycle by dropping jet fuel and firing off missiles willy nilly. This is true for all large organizations in existence, both on the military and civilian sides of government and in large corporations.
- Circuits 7y agoOur military (US) and military budget is just another cold war era echo which has been propagating for far too long. There are so many alarmist media outlets in this country who 'make their steak' off of fear mongering (looking at you FOX news) and what's more unfortunate is the general public's seeming endless supply of naive assent too their ideals and tactics. It isn't the US governments fault the military industrial complex is so large, it's ours. So long as we continue to sheepishly abide by the ignorant notion that our public officials are moral actors whose ambitions and initiatives are driven and monitored by their superb ethical standards we are doomed. We have to hold the women and men in office accountable not only for their actions but for our agenda. We have to stop living under the yoke of fear and distraction pumped out by the media machine. We have to be brave and fight back or else, when the shit hits the fan, we can only blame ourselves.
- brlewis 7y ago> stop living under the yoke of fear and distraction pumped out by the media machine If you have a solution that scales up to the population at large I'm all ears.
- beobab 7y agoGet everyone "vaccinated"? https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/fake-news-vaccine-works-pre-bunk-game-reduces-susceptibility-to-disinformation https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/fake-news-vaccine-works-...
- Something1234 7y agoIt's already become neigh impossible to find the game when it's been buried under all the fake news.
- EGreg 7y agoThat’s the first part of the game ;-)
- 7y ago
- ApolloFortyNine 7y agoThis could be a poster child for how you can be telling the truth, but obviously are biased. Wikipedia lists 186 countries GDP [1]. The 46th (186-46=140) listed country is Romania, with a GDP of $239 billion. In 2018, the U.S defense budget was just under $700 billion. Spending more money, and especially on a Navy at that, will obviously lead to more pollution. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
- SlowRobotAhead 7y agoRight. Normalize the data or get lost.
- vectorEQ 7y agobut we get taxed more :D and then they spend our pollution taxes on more pollution. What a wonderful world.. :D
- zanny 7y agoThere truly are few ways to waste taxpayer dollars more thoroughly than on the military. Social security goes from taxpayer to retiree often to be spent immediately at market for goods and services useful to many fellow countrymen. Medicare removes the burden of caring for your elderly from the lives of millions. Its a huge economic boom to not have your parents retirements costing you your time and productivity. The military, the third largest expense, has three principle benefits - its a direct jobs program for ~3 million people (the enlisted proper military and their tertiary federal contractors supporting them). It keeps in business a dozen or so arms corporations that use their revenue to lobby congress to spend more on the military to make themselves and their investors more money. And it projects American power abroad to use gunpoint as a weapon of trade negotiation and to "maintain the peace" (even through ideological warfare) in our zones of trade globally. The first two are obviously awful for what purpose they fulfill in a vacuum - you could much more cheaply just house 3-5 million people and give billionaires free money instead for a fraction of the actual cost of maintaining the US armed forces. And as a US citizen the idea that my tax money goes to maintain peace in the world for the benefit of all of mankind might be passably acceptable if there were no other choice, but organizations like UN peacekeepers exist (though palpably suck at) fulfilling a similar role except without the bias towards US economic interests. Perhaps without this one nation acting as world police collaborative organizations could fill the role, but probably not. So it comes down to a moralistic argument - is it worth it to waste the time of millions of Americans to perpetuate a theater show dick waving competition with hostile dictatorships like Russia and China around the world for the express purpose of maintaining US economic imperialism. Because its really up to you - we slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocents in deserts and huts the world over but in exchange few nations have the spine to try engaging in organized warfare amongst their neighbors for fear of US intervention. There are benefits, its just if the costs we pay, and continue to pay and more each year, especially when any benefit that could generally be perceived as of universal benefit are things I would at least more generally like to see all of humanity not only pay but participate in the management of are worth it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- _RPM 7y agoPeople don’t remember Pearl Harbor much. Or even 9/11 anymore. Is the US supposed to bow our heads, and be vulnerable to attacks?
- rdlecler1 7y agoThis isn’t surprising. The US military has 1.3 million people that are engaging in a lot of transportation. If we look at list of countries by population, 140 countries have less that 10m people (90 have more than 10 million). So on a per capita basis, the US pollutes maybe 7x as much per capita but again, because the military is using so much transportation it’s not surprising. I would bet CEOs have a bigger per capita carbon footprint.
- mooseburger 7y agoYeah, and still the fact is that if US GHG emissions drop to 0, it won't do much for global warming. It was good that Biden brought up in last night's debate that the US produces 15% of global GHG emissions. Which is disproportionate to their population, but also small enough that unilateral actions by the US will not solve the problem.
- _lessthan0 7y agoWow, this thread makes me want to delete my account. People of the US are way too scary for my liking, makes me never want to land in your country. For me, if US doesnt stop playing the world cop position the worse this world will get.
- justaaron 7y agoLook at all the fake patriots rushing to defend the very thing that is undoing the basic tenets of the USA's founding political philosophies. The articles point is being wantonly ignored by turning this into yet another debate on whether God appointed the USA to defend the world against itself. The US military machine pollutes more than 140 countries! May I suggest that: 1) large powerful countries tend to bully and act pushy and attempt to coerce the smaller and/or poorer countries into doing their bidding 2) nation states as a global system won't likely survive this century, as they are largely squandering what little time we have left to confront the single largest threat humanity has ever faced in it's self-aknowledged history: human caused climate change. Hello 45 degree France in 2019 (celsius, my fahrenheit friends... you know: the system the entire rest of the world uses: where freezing of water is 0 and the boiling point of the same is 100... part of the metric system... in which 1 cubic meter of water is 1000 liters, in which you can convert from driving/flying distances to microscopic ones by shifting some zeros... that's another clue that you are actually doing the Devils work rather than Gods, but I digress...)
- justaaron 7y agoUnilateralism is literally only followed by a singular large country. The entirety of the rest of the world, real-politik-inclusive as it may be (like we aren't LOL) accepts a multi-polar world as a reality. It's very ironic that this same nation has ANYTHING to say about anyone else, not that we need to bring up Egypt or Saudi Arabia or our unusual orange king that loves Duterte more than Trudeau...
- justaaron 7y agoSo, this "more pollution than 140 nations" description encapsulates 2 fundamental truths, IMNVHO 1) That the USA spends more than the entire rest of the world combined in it's "defense" budget, as having more than 700 bases in more than 80 countries has a price. 2) That it's considered above-sacred to allow this military machine to do literally anything it wishes to do, including treating the ocean as it's dumping ground. (is now a good time to mention the Bikini atoll?)
- RenRav 7y agoConsidering the amount of money budgeted to military spending, this isn't too surprising.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoYet still smaller polluter than 55 countries.