Transcript A little context - World Beyond War

JOIN THE PEACE AND
CLIMATE MOVEMENTS!
A little context
America’s fuel use – approx. 20.6 million barrels
of oil/day = ¼ of the world’s oil.
40% of that is gasoline for motor vehicles.
This country pumps a staggering 8 billion
pounds (4 million tons) of carbon into the
atmosphere every day.
Military Energy Use: The numbers
are elusive and enormous!
• Pentagon admits to 144 million
barrels of fuel per year or 400,000
barrels/day, BUT
• More likely 1 million barrels/day or
365 million barrels/year!
• Only fourteen countries exceed
that number! As much as the
whole country of Spain.
In Context
• “The Pentagon is the largest single
consumer of oil in the world, using enough
energy in one year to run all the transit
systems in the country for the next 14 to 22
years.” (Barry Sanders, The Green Zone)
• It both “purchases more light refined
petroleum than any other single organization
in the world,” and also is the largest single
polluter of any single agency or organization
in the world. (BS)
The Pollution
• If estimate half as jet fuel, must
correct: > 650 million pounds
or 325,000 tons/day or over 100
million tons/year CO2
equivalent.
• This is about 8% of the nation’s
total carbon emissions.
M-1 Abrams Tank: 0.2 mpg or 252 gallons/hr.
Army uses 1800 of them and they require a fleet
of 2,000 support trucks
.
USS Independence Aircraft carrier
uses 5,600 gallons an hour =
112,000 tons of CO2/hour.
F-15: 1600 gal jet fuel/hr.
With afterburners – 14,400 gal/hr
equivalent to > 330 tons or
660,000 pounds of CO2 equivalent/hr!
“Principle gas hog award” goes to
B-52 Stratocruiser: uses 3,334 gal/hr
STANDARD fuel use producing
200,000 pounds/hr CO2 equivalent.
• It requires inair refueling
by KC-10
Extender
aircraft using
2,050 gallons
per hour =
120,000 lb or
60 tons CO2
equivalents/h
our.
War, the military’s product!
• In the first three weeks of combat in
Iraq, , the Army calculated its branch
alone required more than 40 million
gallons of fuel.
• If assume 1/4 was jet fuel = 600
million pounds of CO2 equivalent.
• Non-jet fuel produced 660 million
pounds of CO2.
• = 600,000 tons of CO2!
The meaning of shock & awe.
The Problem:
• “Even if every person in America decided to stop
driving today, and even if every polluting factory
in the country voluntarily shut down its
operations right now, the land and the animals
and the water and the air – those things that we
generally include by referring to them as the
environment – would still face a most serious
assault. And, ironically, that greatest single
assault on the environment, on all of us around
the globe, comes from one agency, that one
agency in business to protect us from our
enemies, the Armed Forces of the United
States.” (Barry Sanders, The Green Zone)
http://www.pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison.aspx
http://nationalpriorities.org/en/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/
How Many Jobs Can $1 Billion Buy?
Education
Health Care
Clean Energy Consumption
Military
Source: Pollin & Garrett-Peltier, 2009
The Purpose:
“The de-facto role of the U.S. armed
forces will be to keep the world
safe for our economy and open to
our cultural assault. To those ends
we will do a fair amount of killing.”
-- quote from a former officer at the
Pentagon in charge of thinking about future
warfare in the 1990’s from the military
Parameters Magazine, excerpted by Susan
George of the Transnational Institute.
The vicious
cycle:
burning oil
in war for
oil.
Cutting the military and stopping
war:
• Creates jobs.
• Supports children, the
elderly and our economy.
• Stops climate change.
It’s time to unite our efforts.
• The fact is that we can’t stop
war as long as the world
economy is dependent on
fossil fuels.
• And we can’t reverse climate
change and build sustainable
economies unless we stop war.