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The US of A: Coal and oil right-wing battles life-saving sustainability initiatives in the military. Really.

Posted on 22nd May 2012 by Benno Hansen

Even if wars are not all about oil, soldiers have certainly been killed for oil: Up to one in three US casualties has happened at gasoline convoys. Check out how solar panels are saving lives and improving the flexibility of US Marines deep in foreign deserts: Grist / U.S. military kicks more ass by using less fossil-fuel energy.

“Other people are busy saving the planet; this is about saving Marine lives […] I’d kiss a polar bear if it meant getting one Marine off an IED-filled highway.” – Col. Bob Charette, director of the Marine Corps Expeditionary Energy Office

Irrespective of one’s sentiments towards US soldiers in Afghanistan, the story is a parable for all of society. As the article finishes: “In a time of rising fossil-fuel prices and increasingly apparent climate dangers, the tether of fuel binds all of us — homes, businesses, communities, and whole economies — to a future of vulnerability and instability. Using less energy and generating more of our own is about more than dollars spent or saved. It’s about self-determination. That makes for a more effective military and a more secure, productive society”.

You should think the politicians most eager for war would support such initiatives. But no. Because those politicians are at the same time the ones whose careers are sponsored by the existing energy sector hegemony. Read Slate / Why We Need a Greener Military and Wired / Republicans Order Navy to Quit Buying Biofuels for the full story about right wing politicians working hard to pass a law banning military spending on fuels more expensive than conventional oil. But since it is designed to obstruct initiatives to experiment with (currently relatively expensive) biofuels it explicitly omits alternative energy sources based on coal and gas (probably to allow shale gas, fracking et cetera).

In a way it’s hard to believe the hypocrisy, the idiocy, the callousness. On the other hand it all makes depressing sense. Strong powers in business and politics accumulate vast fortunes on the people wasting obsolete energy and endangering their lives at home, at work and abroad.


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27 Jun

BBC News - Tracking where Russia is taking Ukraine's stolen grain
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/61790625

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»Paramilitære og kriminelle har øget kontrollen med områderne ved hjælp af vold mod landsbyerne, og staten gør intet for at beskytte dem. De mennesker, der forsøger at beskytte jorden og miljøet, har i stigende grad ryggen mod muren«

https://politiken.dk/debat/art8850399/14-%C3%A5rige-Breiner-gik-sin-s%C3%A6dvanlige-rundtur-som-vagt-i-en-lille-bjergby.-P%C3%A5-hjemturen-blev-han-dr%C3%A6bt-af-skud

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20 Jun

"One cannot imagine that millions of tonnes of wheat remain blocked in Ukraine while in the rest of the world people are suffering hunger ... This is a real war crime."

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-blockade-ukrainian-grain-exports-is-war-crime-eus-top-diplomat-2022-06-20/

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14 Jun

https://www.information.dk/udland/2022/06/droner-skaerper-buddhistmunkes-modstand-illegal-skovhugst-cambodja

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13 Jun

BBC News - Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira: Two bodies found in search for missing pair
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-61786946

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