Cutting the Pentagon Budget: A Step to Curbing Climate Change and Healing the Planet

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Cutting-the-Pentagon-Budge-by-Mark-Dunlea-130419-732.html

Cutting the Pentagon Budget: A Step to Curbing Climate Change and Healing the Planet
By Mark Dunlea
OpEdNews Op Eds 4/19/2013 at 08:14:24

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Environmental destruction has often been a direct goal during military conflicts. Ecological destruction is immense during times of armed conflict, such as the US wars in the Middle East. Throughout history water has been re-routed and poisoned to injure one's opponents; croplands have been laid to waste. The US used Agent Orange in Vietnam to destroy the tree cover of supply routes. Similar destruction has taken place in countries targeted by the US war on drugs.

The Pentagon is a major factor in our country's unquenchable thirst for oil. Our fossil fuel addiction led us to invade Iraq, overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953, and to oppose the democratically elected President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. The Department of Defense (DoD) uses 360,000 barrels of oil each day, making it the single largest consumer of petroleum in the world. There are only 35 countries in the world consuming more oil than the DoD.

A study by a Princeton researcher estimated that over 30 years the US spent $7.3 trillion dollars just to keep aircraft carriers in the Middle East to protect the supply routes for oil. The military's protection of oil supplies is a massive taxpayer subsidy to the fossil fuel industry. Were these costs factored into the price of gasoline at the pump, the price would more than double.

The Pentagon blocked EPA's efforts for 20 years to study the toxicity of perchlorate which has been released into the groundwater from more than 12,000 military sites that do live explosive training. In 2011 EPA ruled that perchlorate may have an adverse effect on the health of persons.