A report detailing the many security risks of climate change is notable for the many military leaders who helped to prepare it.  However, there is not mention of the military’s complicity in the production of climate crisis.   In 2009, the daily oil consumption of the U.S. military was estimated at 359,000 barrels of oil a day.  Indeed, Desiree Hellegers argues that the report is best understood as an announcement of the funding bonanza that military industries will make of climate crisis.  So as the U.S. military gears up to “combat” the climate crisis, one should ask how it plans to reduce its obscene uses of fossil fuels.

The National Day of Action on Climate Change took place Saturday, April 14th, 2007, around the United States. Author Bill McKibben, the main organizer of the day’s approximately 1,400 separate demonstrations across the U.S., spoke at Battery Park in southern Manhattan. The crowd of 3,000-5,000 people wore blue as part of the Sea of People project to promote awareness about global warning and its effects on coastal areas. The most moving speakers were young people, however, who encouraged government representatives to act on legislation that has been introduced to cut carbon emissions by 80% before 2050.

Some ideas circulating in the crowd:

Get Inspired:http://www.thetruth.com

http://adbusters.org/home/

http://www.breathingplanet.net/whirl/

Get off the couch:1. Culture Jamming Culture Jamming combines activism with performance art, guerilla tactics of protest, ritual resistance against mass media corporate commercialism. Visit http://www.thevacuumcleaner.co.uk/whirl.html, to view videos of the ritual resistance, known as “whirlmart”. Or take advertising into your own hands by exposing the greenwasher of your choice and wheatpaste an anti-propaganda poster over or near the companies original ad.2.Buy a bullhorn3.Participate in a protest. 4.If you can’t find one, organize one.Educate the public about the issue. Write letters to newspaper editors, participate in town hall meetings. Publicize the meetings to local papers. Pick a highly visible location or centralized shopping area.

Make a difference – dailyBuy compact fluorescent light bulbs. These energy saving light bulbs are standardized to fit in regular sockets, and not only do they last longer than incandescent bulbs, they can save $30 or more in energy costs over the bulbs lifetime.If every one of 110 million American households bought just one compact fluorescent light bulb, replaced an ordinary 60-watt bulb with it, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads. Read this article to learn more: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/108/open_lightbulbs.html

Various academics with elite pedigrees have argued in the journal Foreign Affairs that technological solutions like spreading reflective dust in space will be the inevitable result of the contemporary failures of governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Almost passed over in the discussion, however, is the crucial fact that such superficial solutions would not reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, or the increasing acidification of the oceans. Consequently, we may avoid the worst of the warming, but our coral reefs will be dead, and the ecosystems we have come to rely upon will continue to fall apart.

See “The Geoengineering Option” in Foreign Affairs V.88, No. 2

There is such a machine — it’s called the ‘plant.’

Is the EPA really on our side?? If they allow corporate greenwashing on pesticide packaging and chemicals? http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_3871.cfm

Ah, you could cut the hypocrisy with a knife. George W. Bush, the man who has run an E.P.A. that serves the needs of the energy industry, celebrating himself as a central figure on Earth Day… Link

The FDA is trying to limit warnings for irradiated food.

Politicians wrap themselves in a cloak of green. John Edwards was calling for 80% reduction in carbon emissions with reduceyourcarbon.com, which expired along with his candidacy in 2008.

http://www.epa.gov/

Bush era: The EPA’s Acid Rain Program? File not found. http://www.epa.gov/acidrain/reducing/index.html (Kudos to the Obama administration for fixing the link leading to its Acid Rain Program).

Bush-era kids features blame the clouds and sun but fail to call out the Bush administration itself for failing to enforce the Clean Air Act http://www.epa.gov/acidrain/education/site_kids/lucy/7.htm – something the Supreme Court has ruled it must do.

Within days of the September 11th attack in New York City, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman, together with Time Man-of-the-Year Rudy Giuliani, reassured New Yorkers that air “contaminants are either not detectable or are below the Agency’s concern levels.” In fact, EPA tests taken at the time showed high concentrations of toxic materials in the air downtown, including asbestos, dioxins, and heavy metals. In a bid to spare Wall Street down time, and to maintain value for real estate interests, the safety of the citizens was ignored.

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