News > April 10, 2007

Uncle Sam Wants Sustainability

By Michael Burgner

Environmentalists must decide whether they should accept that stinger missiles will always be with us.

In January, Conscious Choice, a Chicago urban lifestyle magazine released “The Chicago Green Report Card.” Examining Mayor Richard J. Daley’s commitment to a cleaner Chicago, it evaluated the city’s environmental progress and issued grades in 11 key areas—such as making Chicago the organic food capital of the Midwest, cleaning up the Chicago River and creating a world-class mass transit system. Conscious Choice editor in chief Charles Shaw coordinated the project, working closely with the city’s Department of the Environment.

Enter Major John J. Fittipaldi, a senior fellow at Army Environmental Policy Institute in Arlington, Va. On Jan. 29, Fittipaldi contacted Shaw. He said the Army was intrigued by Conscious Choice’s 11-category grading system. Recognizing that the system might not apply directly to U.S. military installations, Fittipaldi wondered if the methodology could be adapted to easily and clearly evaluate the Army’s progress toward its sustainability goals.

Shaw, however, refused to help, telling Fittipaldi that his methodology was “classified.” But he did offer five suggestions that would “surely guarantee” the sustainability of our armed forces. Shaw called for the United States to: End the use of fossil fuels; withdraw our armed presence from, among other locations, the Middle East and central Asia; stop the use of depleted uranium shells; dismantle the nuclear arsenal; and stop using humvees. Those measures, he believes, will go further toward sustaining the armed forces than the construction of a few green roofs or solar panels on military bases.

“I was trying to show them the hypocrisy of using the word sustainable,” he says. “Why would I want to make the army a more efficient, sustainable killing machine?”

Shaw’s concerns have merit. The U.S. military is the largest purchaser of oil in the world. In peacetime, the U.S. armed forces consume 100 million barrels a year—about the same as Greece. And that figure jumps at least 27 percent during wartime. Uranium 238, which is depleted and used in U.S. armor-piercing rounds and Phalanx missiles, has a half-life of 4.5 billion years—it stays in the human body almost indefinitely. Once absorbed, uranium’s radioactivity can lead to cancer or kidney damage, among other health effects (See “What We Leave Behind,” December 2006). According to the most conservative estimates, U.S. and British forces have left 400,000 pounds of depleted uranium in Iraq since the start of the invasion.

Still, some of Shaw’s colleagues feel he missed a valuable opportunity. Alex Steffen, executive editor of the progressive blog WorldChanging.com, can understand why Shaw took his stance, but argues that the military is here to stay.

“Even if we substantially demilitarize—as would be my hope—many will still believe we need a substantial military capable of projecting force around the world,” he says. “Given that reality, I think it is incumbent on us to do everything we can to make the military’s operations as sustainable as possible and its strategy as supportive of positive change as possible.”

Steffen isn’t alone. While most were supportive, some felt Shaw turned this opportunity into a zero-sum game—comprehensive environmental reform, or none at all. And one question surfaced repeatedly: Why shouldn’t we help the military crawl toward sustainability?

The U.S. military is trying to improve its energy efficiency. The Army’s pollution-prevention program, P2, states that when “timely and cost-effective,” limiting emissions and waste is the preferred approach. Quantum Technologies, an alternative-energy firm which is developing fuel-cell technology for General Motors and Ford, has an Army contract to develop mobile hydrogen refueling stations. And, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, acting Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England wrote a memo to U.S. military leaders emphasizing the need for fuel conservation.

Yet despite such moves, the United States still refuses to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol. The Pentagon is resisting pressure to clean up current and former U.S. military bases where buried munitions, fuel spills and other waste contaminate the soil and water.

Ultimately, Shaw feels that the military and, by extension, the U.S. government is merely trying to avoid liability and culpability. “They see that green is sexy and cool and that people don’t like oil corporations right now,” Shaw says. “They think they can dress themselves up with it.”

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• Reader Comments

  One of the worst side effects of war, according to humanitarian NGOs, is the ongoing effects of tactical and logistical residuals such as barbed wire enclosures and other disruptive infrastructure of war, land mines, and destruction from depleted uranium. All this keeps killing, maiming and disrupting and ruining everyday life long after the official hostilities cease. War, a key source of global capitalism’s ability to survive, expand, and restructure capital and restore falling profit rates without the associated renewed rising employment pressures,

  Yet war is expensive, polluting, and filled with myriad annoyances for local populations. One of the contradictions is that as war expands opportunites for monopoly capitalismboth in terms of direct contracting and in politically forcing open markets for goods and capital, it creates other expensive problems and local resistence that is hard to overcome.

  The current epoch of globalization has witnessed the decline of US economic hegemony in the wake of corporate growth of EU and Japanese firms as well as some third world ones like those of Korea and Brazil. US imperialism has relied increasingly on the military in order to maintain its global dominance and economic advantages. Yet war is becoming increasingly untenable. The welling up of sharp contradictions could spell an impending crisis for US imperialism.

  Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 10, 2007 at 10:06 PM

  Shaw took a principled stand, and for that gets vilified by a site that tries to call itself “worldchanging”?  “A substantial military capable of projecting force” - How about we “project force” Steffan to the front lines where he can “project force” to some more innocent civilians? Shaw is absolutely heroic and correct in what he said and did, in not going with the U.S. military’s program of the day. I’m sure the Pentagon will find many, many sources for “greening up,” drawn from all the easily-bought ranks of the college-"educated" graduates. Martin Seligman, former APA president and guru of “positive"psychology, has given special briefings to the US military - Shaw’s stand looks awfully large compared to these folks…

  Posted by notabilia on Apr 11, 2007 at 10:28 AM

  See Ayn Rand’s essay The Roots Of War in Capitalism:The Unknown Ideal. Capitalism is the most anti-war, pro-peace system ever conceived. Socialists start wars and killed over 200 million in the Communist countries during just the 20th century. Socialist societies
  like Cuba and Vietnam all have conscription. Ignore the Marxian BS in the first posting.

  Posted by blondemike on Apr 11, 2007 at 5:52 PM

  “ Uranium 238, which is depleted and used in U.S. armor-piercing rounds and Phalanx missiles, has a half-life of 4.5 billion years—it stays in the human body almost indefinitely”

  ....If you can find a person with a depleted uranium shell in them I would love to see the case. The energy transfer to a human body would render the corpse unrecognizable and require a shovel to accumulate enough parts to study. As depleted uranium shells are strictly anti-armor the total amount expended since 2003 is minimal. Haji doesn’t have any more tanks or BMP’s to shoot at so high density bismuth with a steel jacket is the ammo of choice.

  humvees or the M998 High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) are diesel powered all wheel drive vehicles. The “Hummer” you hippies despise so much is gasoline powered and a civilian vehicle.  Different vehicles.........The civilian version is uneconomical and impractical the military version is the perfect offroad vehicle and fuel efficient.

  “withdraw our armed presence from, among other locations, the Middle East and central Asia”

  What utter horseshit. Haji wants to die. He has made his needs clear to any reasonable person who listens. He needs our help to meet Allah. We are helping him to accomplish his dream as quickly and expeditiously as possible.

  Posted by texasindependent on Apr 15, 2007 at 12:45 AM

  Tex,

  DU is not pure U238 but 99.8&#xU2;38 and 0.2% u235% by mass. There is also a small speck of U234 which contributes about 14% of the radioactivity emitted while U235 contributes about 1%. The remainder is Alpha radiation contributed by the U238. The other 15% is highly damaging Beta and Gamma radiation which has a very long half life. It is useful in armor piercing because it is two and a half times the density of steel and one and a half times the density of lead. The danger is that the uranium tip burns up and disintegrates because of the speed and momentum of the blast and spreads radioactivity. Depleted Uranium is made from Uranium Hexafloride (UF6) which is so plentiful (about 728,000 metric tonnes) that its widespread use is seen as a positive way of reducing excess US stocks of this radioactive material. Thousands of rounds have been used in the Balkans and the Persian Gulf.

  Dozens of US and other soldiers have complained of the health effects of exposure to DU and a study of live births at the Basra University Hospital shows that an increase of 426% for general malignancies, 366% for leukemia, and over 600% for general birth defects over the period 1990 to 2001. This is attributed to the heavy use of depleted uranium in the Basra province in the early stages of combat in the first Gulf War. As of the first quarter of 2000, there were about 63 cases of DU poisening being treated by the VA health clinics and hospitals. There are more today. DU should be dropped. It is also an inhumane weapon as it violates the Geneva Conventions on the use of such weapons due to the manner of death it inflicts on the enemy which involves suffocation from depleted oxygen and burning up from the fires created on impact
  .

  Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 15, 2007 at 10:16 AM

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• Uncle Sam Wants Sustainability