design: lizardelement.com

Environmental NGO’s have been uncritically thumping the green tech funding plank and they’re generating funding that could be harder to hold onto than a fistful of sand in the Iraqi oilfields.

There’s a coup underway in the environmental movement. But the golpistas (coup-makers) aren’t exactly the usual suspects. They’re not the consumer product manufacturers who co-opt our messaging and re-package the same old junk with green labels. The culprits are members of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA). War profiteers are charging, guns-drawn, into the green tech sector and eyebrows should be raised. This is a hold-up!

The new gospel of “greening” the armed forces is drawing public money that makes domestic infrastructure handouts look like pennies in a fountain. “Green Jobs” means something else entirely to these folks.

But what’s wrong with a greener military? Simply put, war is always an assault on the environment. The US military could become more fuel-efficient and drop from their status as the world’s largest single oil consumer. But that wouldn’t change the fact that forcibly destabilizing states like Iraq and Afghanistan means a protracted collapse of civil infrastructure that results in mass pollution and environmental disasters, compounded by the toxic devastation wrought by military explosives.

The expansionist problem

More fundamentally, the military’s expansionist ideology runs counter to our basic interests as environmentalists. Climate recovery means transitioning to a non-expansionist economy based on real green technology and localized energy independence. Localization doubly addresses the problems of extracting finite fossil fuels and the resulting unstable temporary economies that create fleeting jobs and devastate communities. Mountaintop removal coal mining is a prime example. In Appalachia, the coal industry is stripping every mountain it can get its hands on with a minimal temporary workforce. As the folks in Coal River, WV have shown, wind farming those same ridges would create secure local jobs, leave mountains intact, and generate electricity and tax revenues until the wind stops blowing. Nothing that sensible figures into the military industrial agenda.

“Greening” the military, by all indications, is a movement of false solutions. Struck with the overwhelming cost of oil-based fuel, the Air Force plans to transition to 50% coal-to-liquids and biomass synthetic fuel by 2016. That’s right, coal-fired bombers and fighter jets. Ingenious! The Navy is pushing a similarly backward approach: GMO biofuels for aircraft; hybrid and eventually all-electric ships. More coal, more nukes, and yet another subsidy for industrial agriculture, arguably the US’ most economically and environmentally unsustainable sector. This push for false solutions reveals the deep contradictions of “greening” war.

The Economist gets to the heart of the matter, explaining that the new military industrial agenda “is not a question of preventing climate change, reducing dependence on imported oil, or even complying with President Barack Obama’s green agenda. The need for alternative sources of energy is a military necessity.” In Afghanistan, it takes 7 gallons of fuel to deliver 1 gallon for use in battle. Fuel supply lines are the US’ greatest vulnerability there and in Iraq. “A gallon of jet fuel that costs $1.05 ends up costing $400 by the time it gets to Afghanistan…” reports the NDIA journal in articles with titles like “Gargantuan Thirst for Fuel Creates Logistical Nightmare for Marines” and “Tough to Free Troops From Oppressive Tyranny of Fuel“.

It’s a cruel irony to claim that the military is oppressed by the “tyranny of fuel.” In reality, US troops are acting under orders to enforce the tyranny of fuel and oppress Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis and whosoever else has the misfortune of living in the midst of strategic oil and natural gas reserves. My thanks go to the NDIA for letting me use this language without sounding like a total wing nut.

The resource-grab behind the expansionist US War on Terror in the Middle East and Central Asia is the real tyranny here. It’s a war for fossil fuels fought in the service of US-allied multinational energy corporations. I wont beat a dead camel and explain the oil agenda behind the Iraq war, but the resource interests behind the Afghanistan war bear repeating.

Buried under the deception of anti-terror propaganda is the reality that Afghanistan is a key route for US energy interests seeking to access otherwise Russian-controlled Central Asian natural gas and oil. In a pre-war document that can be recovered from internet archives, The US Dept of Energy, Energy Information Administration explained,

Afghanistan’s significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea. This potential includes proposed multi-billion-dollar oil and gas export pipelines through Afghanistan, although these plans have now been thrown into serious question … low oil prices and turmoil in Afghanistan … making the pipeline project uneconomical and too risky. (DOE, 2000)

Oil and natural gas prices are up and the growing US occupation aims to stabilize the country. Hamid Karzai, the US-backed president of Afghanistan since 2004, famous for his 2009 election fraud, was in on the pipeline project years before 9/11. In the late 1990s, Karzai served as an adviser to Unocal (since acquired by Chevron) when it was planning the pipeline cited by the DOE above. Therein lies the real oppressive tyranny of fuel behind the US war in Afghanistan.

Bringing the war home

Back on the home front in Washington DC, where I live and organize against climate chaos and the War on Terror, the NDIA and friends are jockeying for green funding. Recently, our city played host to the Military Energy Alternatives Conference where the wrong people were taking aim at green tech funding. The website announced that, “Discussion will focus on the renewable path to energy security and how funds in the stimulus package have been appropriated towards a clean energy goal.” These events should be considered important points of intervention for the anti-war and climate movements. The Marine Corps hosted a similar conference recently.

Meanwhile, the recession rages and DC Green organizations are still pushing climate legislation as a jobs bill, S1733, the “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.” Putting carbon trading and the maddening weaknesses of the bill aside, greening the economy is still the only logical path to sustainable recovery. Green jobs are a hard sell after Obama conceded defeat to the racist red-baiting campaign to depose Van Jones, the administration’s green jobs adviser. And even harder since the State of the Union address. But the military is still on board and that’s reason for concern.

War loves a recession. Following the great depression, WWII helped rescued the US economy and provided near full employment. Today’s situation is different. The War on Terror is one of the driving factors behind the recession and unemployment is at a terrible high. The winners here are the war-profiteering industries, turning record profits, and military recruiters. I wrote my undergrad senior thesis on youth recruitment and the lessons of history carry on. Since the draft was closed in 1973 and the military became an “all volunteer force,” youth unemployment has been the most important factor feeding recruitment. In the early 1980s, recruiters seized upon the recession and developed today’s high school recruiting strategies. They brought in the most new recruits in the history of the all-volunteer force before 2009.

While we call for green jobs, the recession is killing young peoples’ prospects and recruiters are circling like vultures over our peers. Youth unemployment is at a record high 50%, with twice as many black youth as white youth jobless. The crisis-level recruiting shortfalls of the Bush-era are over and recruiters are bringing in more soldiers than the all-volunteer force has ever seen. Aided by a $20 billion recruiting budget, 2009 was the first year that recruitment numbers exceeded quotas in all the military services. It’s a racist poverty draft, which is worth noting because racial and economic justice are among the founding ideas of the green jobs movement.

Obama’s 2009 stimulus provided $500 million to fund civilian green jobs and $420 million to fund military “greening.” That was part of the $7.8 billion defense portion of the stimulus added to the $500 billion 2009 military budget. It’s also disturbing to compare those numbers to the $256 million in the stimulus for Americorps and Job Corps. I haven’t found a thorough analysis of the $708 billion 2010 military budget or the $33 billion in additional funds that Obama requested for war in Afghanistan. Such research is especially challenging because the military stopped using words like recruitment and accessions in its public filings, presumably to insulate itself from due criticism.

I would be remiss to ignore the larger sums in the stimulus for green energy, like the $11 billion for “smart grid” improvements. And the NDIA folks aren’t ignoring that money either. In Washington, DC, Lockheed Martin, the infamous hi-tech arms developer, won the contract to manage the $12.7 million to manage commercial energy efficiency programs. They also have similar contracts with New York State Energy R&D and PG&E. If the administration pumps increasing funding into military green tech, then the corporations that benefit will undoubtedly keep putting those developments to work in the civilian sector.

Maybe that still doesn’t sound so bad to some readers. So, lets get to the core of the ideology that would excuse a corporate-militarized green grid. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Right, Adam Smith? Hopefully by now, I’ve made it clear that the “interest” behind the NDIA agenda is about “green” profit by any means. If we leave it to them, then endless resource wars and false solutions is what’s for dinner.

Moving forward

There’s been a major shift in Washington since the days of the 2009 stimulus and only time will tell where politicians and corporations go with the green doctrine this year. Obama is turning away from his election-year green rhetoric and the supreme court just opened the floodgates to a multinational corporate buyout of congress. The 2011 federal budget proposal for green energy education could be a glimmer of hope. Or it could be yet another subsidy to military industry research. Whatever is to come, the war profiteering corporate green push is still on. Royal Dutch Shell just launched a green tech greenwash advertising campaign that’s dominating the DC Metro.

Fortunately, young peoples’ Anti-war Anti-Warming organizing is heating up too. Let’s the keep the pressure on and take the fight to the Fossil Hawks. Coal-fired fighter jets, biofuel bombers, and an armed green jobs corps advancing on the horizon? That’s not my clean energy future.

design by lizardelement.com

“Young people are turning up the pressure because we are not convinced by Obama’s promises to draw back from war and support a clean energy-driven economic recovery,” says Brian Menifee, Howard University student activist.

video from dc.indymedia.org

Stay tuned for more footage from the parade, including our Green Jobs Not War action at the Armed Forces Recruiting Center.

From the press release…

WASHINGTON DC – Young anti-war and environmental organizers are mobilizing in response to the failure of the UN Copenhagen climate talks, escalation of the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the crisis of 50% youth unemployment. “Young people are turning up the pressure because we are not convinced by Obama’s promises to draw back from war and support a clean energy-driven economic recovery,” says Brian Menifee, Howard University student activist.

Funk the Warming participants will parade and dance with a mobile sound system behind a banner reading, “Student Power for Climate Justice, Down with the Fossil Hawks.” Organizers have choreographed a diverse sequence of rowdy non-violent actions targeting corporate and military sites on K Street. “We’re dropping beats, not bombs to show that youth have the power and creativity to build a peaceful green economic recovery,” explains GWU student activist, Drew Sherlock.

Chevron and Halliburton will be targeted for their involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and their contribution to global warming. Halliburton provides military logistics, oilfield services, and builds power plants. Chevron owns Unocal, the company that planned the trans-Afghanistan pipeline in the 1990s. Sam Daly from DC Rising Tide: “Piping Central Asian gas and oil through Afghanistan and controlling Iraqi oilfields are the true motivations behind the US occupations. Resource wars abuse the earth and exploit the young people who inevitably fight them.”

Military recruitment is flourishing thanks to mass youth unemployment and the $20 billion recruiting budget. Meanwhile, the Green Jobs training program is pinching its meager $500 million stimulus funding. Brian Menifee: “College tuition hikes are out of control and too many of our peers can’t afford school or find a job other than war. We want green jobs and education not these resource wars that are killing our future.”

Students from American University, George Mason University, UMD College Park, Howard U, GWU, Arne Arundel Community College, and local high schools will make-up the groundswell of the parade. DC Students for a Democratic Society, an education justice network, and DC Rising Tide, a direct action climate justice collective, are coordinating the event

Nothing says “Happy new year” like kilotons of TNT blasting down your horizon and burying your streams, and a deposit of millions of cubic yards of hazardous waste into already devastated valleys. That’s Pres. Obama and the EPA’s new years greeting card to the folks in Lincoln, West Virginia.

Nothing says “you betrayed us” like a rowdy gang of anti-mountaintop removal activists at EPA HQ in DC during the morning rush, holding giant red letters spelling out “SHAME” and chanting down the EPA staff’s resolve to keep appeasing the coal barons. (Actually, there are much better ways to say it, but we had a night to plan and the underfunded, volunteer-driven anti-MTR movement does what we can with what we’ve got.)

The bad news didn’t reach most of us at DC Rising Tide (DCRT) until last night’s meeting. On Tuesday, Patriot Coal got the EPA go-ahead to start blasting through 3 miles of mountain streams in Lincoln, WV. The Hobet 45 mine, named for the Patriot subsidiary in charge, is the first major Appalachian MTR coal mining permit to be loosed from the 79 suspended for EPA review last year. DCRT wasn’t about to let it go unnoticed.

Late-night text blasts for recruiting, media prep, and a 1AM press advisory, and then a little sleep for the Wednesday morning action.

“Mountaintop removal does not deserve EPA approval/ That’s madness—insane/ Lisa Jackson, what a shame!” Our chants and signs had heads turning as droves of government workers climbed out of the Federal Triangle Metro and into the EPA. We got plenty thumbs up and had a good number of “What’s this all about?” conversations while tens of security and police piled on the entrances, no doubt worried about another sit-in. Haha, not this time.

All said and done, we reached the people we were aiming for and made some good inroads with the press. The short timeline hurt our coverage. It was scant, but NPR greeted AM commuters with announcements of environmentalists’ disgust with the new permit. Emails from curious journalists have us optimistic about future coverage as the story heats up.

With Monday’s announcement of a 60-stay favoring the anti-MTR challenge at Spruce, WV, it’s clear that the Hobet 45 decision was a move by Obama and Jackson to maintain the balance and appease the wrathful coal barons. This policy is a disgrace, but we refuse to let Hobet 45 set the tone for 2010. We have to keep organizing and escalating in DC and in the coalfields until the administration recognizes that we are the ones they must appease.

more photos here

Speaking of coal barons riding the Obama administration, we can’t wait to see Massey Coal CEO, the West Virginia cartoon villain Don Blankenship stumble and fall at his Jan. 21 debate with Robert Kennedy Jr. Think Elmer Fudd vs. Bugs Bunny. A good laugh for a long fight.

The anti-MTR movement’s got more in store for the coal barons and their federal handlers. We’ve heard that the EPA may announce another permit next week. So, stay tuned.

To our DC-area allies, we hope you’ll join us in the streets at the January 29, noontime DC Rising Tide-DC Students for a Democratic Society joint “Funk the Warming” street party against the fossil hawks.

More on this shameful week:

• “The pro-nuclear Department of Energy is set to offer this month the first of nearly $20 billion in loan guarantees to a nuclear industry that hasn’t built a plant since the 1970s or raised any money to do so in years.” @ Truthout.org
• EPA Approves West Virginia MTR Permit: major step backwards for Agency by Kate Rooth @ RAN
• Citizens Shame Environmental Protection Agency for Approving West Virginia Mine Permit (pres release) @ DCRT

We at the DC Climate Action Factory teamed up with a delegation of irate Danish anthrofishies and hit the frozen streets of K and I: global corporate lobby ground zero. It’s from here that climate criminals and climate profiteers waged their war to infiltrate and cripple the climate legislation that so many saw as the lynchpin for progress towards a real deal at the COP. Naturally, this place is home to the Angry Mermaid Award winners.

First stop we hit it was API, the American Petroleum Institute. API came in at 3rd place in global interweb polling of over 10,000 homo sapiens sapiens and mermaids. API’s lobbying war chest weighed in at $4.1 million this year. Beyond the beltway, they fielded a mercenary astroturf army, lobbing lies at congresspeople and directing climate coverage in corporate media. All to perpetuate the fossil fuel economy that’s devastating the planet and threatening mermaids, humans, and everyone else who depends on natural temperatures and stable ecosystems.

Apparently someone tipped them off, because we arrived to find the API entrance caution-taped. But nay, no length of ribbon could thwart our MERMAID FUNK ARMADA. We triumphed in delivering a 5ft. Angry Mermaid award inside the building despite heavy resistance from the astroturf army sentinels who tried in vain to blockade the entrance.

But that’s all for another video. And so is our daring ascent up the highest steeple in the Church of Shell Oil, Jorma Ollila’s sustainable tar sands spa. Yes, we bested them too, the 2nd place winners. But that is also for another video. This is a 3-part series.

What we can share is this: Exclusive footage of a daring fin and foot dance attack on Monsanto castle, 1st prize winners. We were victorious in our goal of decorating Monsanto’s terrific genetically modified Christmas tree with a life-size Mermaid trophy. But, alas, there were casualties on our side. Chalk another up for the murderous behemoth that is Monsanto.

Monsanto is at the head of the corporate climate profiteers‘ counter-evolution, undermining sustainable technology by lobbying for false solutions to the CO2 emissions crisis. Monsanto’s prime false solution is leading the proprietary GMO biofuel monoculture empire. Similarly, Shell and API champion Carbon Capture technology and unconventional extraction like the Alberta Tar Sands project.

Alongside the false solutions scam, the Angry Mermaid winners feed from another common trough: government subsidies for carbon-intensive economic sectors. All three winners benefit from fossil fuel, factory-farming, and military-industrial subsidies. The related industrial sectors, transport, industrial agriculture, dirty energy, manufacturing, and war, comprise the greatest emitters in the second-worse emitting country in the world.

As people who depend on the land and water ecosystems in the United States and depend on the same oceans and atmosphere, we share in the rage of the angry mermaids. Thus the uncompromising beat of our global MERMAID FUNK ARMADA. We are unstoppable. And as with all things unstoppable, more action is on the way.

The Angry Mermaid Award is organised by ATTAC Denmark, Corporate Europe Observatory, Focus on the Global South, Friends of the Earth International, Oilchange International and Spinwatch.

Here’s another DC Delivery by the Organic Consumers Association