Calls are growing for a Green New Deal (GND) and it could change the world. With legislation proposed in the United States this February by Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and international support from notable left-wing politicians, the GND consists of large-scale investment to kick start a just transition. Measures include decarbonising the economy; investing in transport and infrastructure; creating and promoting green jobs that provide decent work; guaranteeing human rights and workers’ rights; and protecting the environment. It offers an alternative to the dominance of fossil fuel intensive capitalism that’s pushing us all to the edge of a climate, ecological and financial meltdown. But to truly tackle the scale of the crisis facing humanity, the GND needs to go much further: we must dismantle the military-industrial complex.
As well as being destructive to all facets of plant, human and animal life, war – and its attendant industries – has a horrifying impact on the climate. Until 2015, military emissions were excluded from all national climate targets within international climate agreements. And with President Donald Trump pulling the US out of the 2015 Paris Climate agreement, its military-related emissions will continue unregulated. Already, the US is second largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China.
Between 1751 and 2010, scientist Richard Heede calculated that US oil companies Chevron and ExxonMobil alone contributed to over 7.5 per cent of anthropogenic emissions. Follow-up research shows that since annual climate talks started in 1988 until 2017, 20 corporations created 63 per cent of man-made emissions, eight of which are US-based.
As with all climate accountability, calculating the impact of war is getting clearer every year. The US Department of Defense is “the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum and correspondingly, the single largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world,” according to a report published by the US political scientist Neta Crawford this June.
For comparison, the US military alone emits more greenhouse gases than Sweden or Portugal annually.
Waging war damages the environment and atmosphere, beyond the fuel burnt by military machines and the incredible logistics of destruction. As well as an estimated 288,000 violent deaths, the profound ecological damage caused by the 2003 Iraq invasion, for example, includes soil, water and air pollution from the toxic smoke produced by burning oil wells and the highly poisonous incendiaries dropped on Iraqi land, including depleted uranium. In Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the forests have still not recovered from the use of napalm (a thickened petroleum product) and Agent Orange (a ‘tactical herbicide’) during the Vietnam War. Then there’s the carbon footprint of rebuilding the towns, cities and nations destroyed by conflict, in addition to the emissions caused by the by-products of war, such as building and testing the weapons.
The role of oil and putting peace at the centre of a Green New Deal
As we well know, the world’s insatiable demand for oil has been at the heart of some of the world’s major US-led conflicts in recent decades, from Afghanistan to Iraq, to Libya and Syria. It is no coincidence that oil-rich Venezuela and Iran top the war hawks in Washington’s wish-list of where to invade next.
The war machine also enables oil companies to commit violence beyond war. For centuries, extractivist industries have violently invaded and plundered indigenous homelands in the pursuit of profit. All over the world, mainly in the Global South, there are toxic wastelands were once rich terrain flourished. Take Nigeria’s Niger Delta region, where Shell has reduced an area of astonishing biodiversity into one of the most polluted areas on Earth, or Chevron-Texaco’s decades-long destruction of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Stopping extractivism is essential to tackling runaway climate change. That’s why last month 24 leading scientists called on the United Nations to make ecocide a war crime within the Geneva Convention.
Alongside motivating wars and causing environmental damage with its use, oil powers another vicious cycle within the capitalist system. Oil producing states buy swathes of weapons from western powers, which allows international capital to recoup its petrodollars.
Simultaneously, this reinforces the power of some of the world’s most authoritarian regimes. Saudi Arabia, for example, stands accused of extensive domestic human rights violations, war crimes in Yemen, support of bloody military regimes in Egypt, Libya and Sudan, and enabling the funding of terrorism. More needs to be done to reign in the world’s second largest oil producer, and challenging military-trading alliances is a key pressure point.
Putting peace front and centre of the Green New Deal offers a way to reverse the vicious cycle of arms, oil and war. However, corporate interests are already fiercely resisting the Deal, with an anti-GND narrative permeating the corporate media. One argument is that it is unaffordable. US Republicans argue it will cost US$93 trillion, citing a right-wing think tank’s report that offers no actual costing.
Against the rising political momentum for climate action, including the GND, more oil companies are now sponsoring a carbon tax called the Baker-Schultz Plan. But this plan ensures business continues as usual while limiting the past climate liabilities of big polluters.
On the other hand, the scale of the GND – if implemented – is malleable. By offering solutions to global problems, a Green New Deal offers scope for building a broad base of public support. This counter-power is essential to push the idea through, both at the ballot box and beyond into legislation.
Reforging the green machine of industry
The Green New Deal derives its name from the 1930s New Deal, an extensive programme of national public works that lifted the US out of the Great Depression. But this time we need to go further. Advocates for the GND talk of how decarbonising the economy today needs to match the scale of World War II mobilisation. In fact, we need to dismantle the military-industrial-petrochemical complex and reforge a green machine.
Cadiz, Spain, is one place that Green New Deal policies are being applied, including the use of a publicly- owned energy grid. Profits are reinvested into renewables and supporting people in energy poverty. This fits with the city hall government’s ethos of people and planet over profit – although the mayor has been criticised for a US$2 billion contract to build warships for Saudi Arabia. But Cadiz too could convert its war machine into something socially-useful – the blueprint for this was conceptualised over 40 years ago.
In 1976, workers from a British aerospace company, Lucas, designed the Lucas Plan as a way to avoid redundancies. Simply put, it proposed shifting the skills and infrastructure that built military equipment into creating socially useful outputs. Over 150 products were proposed, from medical equipment to energy conservation, utilising the state support already offered for military manufacturing. It went unrealised, but with the Labour party today advocating measures towards a UK Green New Deal, the Lucas Plan is ever more relevant.
Of course, there is the question of funding. GND advocates point to several means to finance it, including the fact that the cost of not dealing with a climate meltdown is far greater than funding the GND, and that oil subsidies could be shifted to green industries.
Adding peace to the GND broadens the potential funding stream even further. In the US alone, imagine what could be achieved if every dollar from the Pentagon went to supporting community wind farms, electric transport and retrofitting homes?
Winning the political campaign to implement the Deal would mean redressing some of the most urgent issues of global injustice surrounding the ongoing impact of colonialism and about who actually profits from the ongoing climate meltdown. These questions are increasingly being asked in court rooms. Due to factors including increasing scientific understanding, we are moving towards a phase where climate perpetrators will have to repay climate victims. We would easily exceed the money necessary to pay for a global Green New Deal, if those who created billions profiting from wars, oil and other connected industries were made to pay reparations.
So, if we are going to create a transformative social justice project, why not make it global? With it, we can consider a future where the people of Yemen and Sudan are building community-based renewables rather than facing death in oil-driven geopolitics. We can look forward to indigenous societies living alongside nature, rather than facing genocide. We can imagine a world where the energy put into destroying life is instead used to support a decent life for all.
