I am only going to post a little bit of this article. This is so in part because I have serious trouble calling killers of humans environmentalists. Still the point is that if all the militaries in the world just quit using any fuel tomorrow the price of all those fuels would crash and stay very low in price for a very long time. So here is a very little bit of a very good article. I mean really anything that gets Inhofe to pound on his table is a very good thing indeed.
The Real Reason the Military is Going Green
Big Oil is a big risk for national security. Can our military—the world’s No. 1 oil guzzler—change the politics of climate change?
posted Jun 04, 2012
Retired Brig. Gen. Steven Anderson calls himself “an accidental environmentalist.”
His epiphany about climate change started with a tactical problem. In 2006 and 2007, when he served as the military’s chief logistician in Iraq, he coordinated the transport of millions of gallons of fuel across the country to power everything from vehicles to the large compressors used to cool individual tents—or, as Anderson puts it, for “air conditioning the desert.” He was taking one casualty for every 24 fuel convoys, and he was doing 18 convoys a day. That’s one casualty every other day. He needed to get the trucks off the road. He needed to find a way to reduce the military’s fuel use.
The question remains, can the weight and pragmatism of military leadership sway political leaders in Washington?
“There’s a direct relationship between energy and the military. The more energy consumed, the less effective you are militarily because you’re more vulnerable,” said Anderson, who reported to General David Petraeus. “They love to take out our field trucks. They make a big boom when they do.”
Since then, Anderson, like many military leaders, has realized that guzzling oil makes the United States vulnerable in other ways. “I’m a soldier,” Anderson said. “Why should I be concerned about climate change? Climate change brings about global instability. That makes the world more vulnerable and it’s more likely that soldiers like myself will have to fight and die somewhere.”
Never mind D.C. conservatives who claim to be tough on defense and suspicious of climate science: The Department of Defense isn’t denying that climate change is a major national security threat. “The change is happening. It’s just a reality,” said retired Marine Col. Mark Mykleby, a former strategy assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Science tells us it’s coming our way.”
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Go there and read the whole thing. More next week.
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