The UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) begins on Oct 31 in Glasgow, Scotland.
Hundreds of peace and environmental organizations have announced an event on November 4 in Glasgow.
They are demanding that militaries be included in climate agreements.
Over 400 organizations and 20,000 people have signed a petition at COP26.info addressed to COP26 participants: “Stop Excluding Military Pollution from Climate Agreements.”
The group World BEYOND War states: “The U.S. military is one of the biggest polluters on earth. Since 2001, the U.S. military has emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, equivalent to the annual emissions of 257 million cars on the road.” The group adds that the Pentagon is “the largest institutional consumer of oil ($17B/year) in the world, and the largest global landholder with 800 foreign military bases in 80 countries. By one estimate, the U.S. military used 1.2 million barrels of oil in Iraq in just one month of 2008. One military estimate in 2003 was that two-thirds of the U.S. Army’s fuel consumption occurred in vehicles that were delivering fuel to the battlefield.”
Speakers at the event on 4 November will include: Stuart Parkinson of Scientists for Global Responsibility UK, Chris Nineham of the Stop the War Coalition, Alison Lochhead of Greenham Women Everywhere, Jodie Evans of CODEPINK: Women for Peace, Tim Pluta of World BEYOND War, David Collins of Veterans For Peace, Lynn Jamieson of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and others to be announced. There will also be music by David Rovics.
“Our purpose here begins with making people aware of the problem,” said David Swanson, executive director of World BEYOND War. “Imagine a limit on dangerous items you can carry on airplanes that makes an exception for nuclear weapons. Imagine a diet that limits your calories but makes an exception for 36 gallons of ice cream an hour. Here the world is all gathering to impose limits on greenhouse gas emissions that make an exception for militaries. Why? What possible excuse is there for that, unless killing people in the short term is so important to us that we’re willing to kill everyone in the long term. We need to speak up for life, and soon.”
“War and militarism are amongst the unnamed enemies of our ecosphere,” said Chris Nineham of the Stop the War Coalition. “The U.S. military is the biggest single consumer of oil on the planet, and the last two decades of war have polluted on an almost unimaginable scale. It is a scandal that military emissions are being excluded from the discussion. If we want to end warming we need to end war.”
“War is obsolete. There is no doubt, the quicker we get rid of it, the quicker we improve the climate,” added Tim Pluta, World BEYOND War Chapter Organizer in Asturias, Spain.
Contacts:
David Swanson, Executive Director of World BEYOND War, david@worldbeyondwar.org
The following will be going to Glasgow:
Nancy Mancias, CODE PINK, nancymancias@codepink.org
Tim Pluta, inhatim17@gmail.com