issue 33// vol 47

Did everyone miss the IPCC doomsday report?

» Acollective ‘what more can I do’ point may have been reached

Matthew Fraser Opinions Editor

Ra” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report stating that the previous goals set in the Paris Climate Accord are out of reach and that the global average temperature will rise by at least 1.5° Celsius by 2040. This basically ensures that large swaths of the Middle East will become uninhabitably hot, flooding may shrink the liveable areas in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia—and this means mass immigration will likely ensue. I think this is nothing short of a doomsday prediction, yet somehow it has largely flown under the radar.

Maybe it’s just latent COVID fatigue or a doomsday weariness, but it doesn’t seem like the engines of humanity are turning over with the threat of climate change. Could it be that we have all resigned ourselves to paper straw and reusable bag subterfuge of climate activism knowing all well that it means next to nothing compared to the non-adjustment from the commanding heights of society? Have people just given up on the possibility of

climate and world rehabilitation when we collectively face housing unaffordability and billionaire space races?

I suspect that it’s just impossible to be mobilized for action forever, and

particularly when the mobilization was largely surface level and unconnected to the larger and more pollutant corporations. Maybe more people would love to grow food on their own property and limit their

Title The military may just be the biggest polluter

» And why not? Who would stop them?

Matthew Fraser Opinions Editor

n recent days, much attention has

been placed on the American military and the immediate disaster following its withdrawal from Afghanistan. Harrowing images of Afghani people storming the Kabul airport in hopes of fleeing the Taliban rule have had primetime placement in news feeds. But little attention has been placed—over the past few years—on the horrendous environmental damage that the military has caused.

The American military maintains no less than 78 bases in Japan, and yet through a series of deals and release agreements they are not responsible for any environmental damage they cause in Japan. Taking advantage of these circumstances the military usage of a highly toxic firefighting foam in Okinawa has been frequent and largely unrestricted.

Because the US army does not need to be responsible (or even careful) with these foams that has led to the water table in Okinawa being heavily polluted— and the people of the area possessing extraordinarily high levels of the toxins used in these firefighting foams. The levels are so high that citizens petitioned for the local government to filter their water supply until the filtration costs became so excessive that they had to get the federal government to take over the filtering operation. The idea of the American military holding multiple bases in Japan

for strategic deterrence during a mostly peaceable era is bad enough, but for them to be poisoning the people who they claim to protect is all that much worse.

One of the more disturbing facts regarding these foreign-military installations is the preferred method of garbage disposal. The US military has grown to favor what have become known as “burn pits”: an ever-burning pit in or near the encampment where all the waste is thrown. Human waste, electronics, medical and toxic waste, batteries, scrap metal, old food, and anything; all is thrown into the pit to be burnt as opposed to being disposed of properly. The smoke that is emitted from these pits is highly toxic and the soldiers who are forced to breathe it in often comedown with horrific and exotic illnesses. Jon Stewart, formerly of the Daily Show, has become a leading emissary in the fight against burn pits and the effort to ensure that the millions of veterans effected are compensated and have their medical treatments fully paid. However, the fact that the military willingly allowed its own personnel to be so heavily exposed to these incinerated chemicals and materials should tell us how little they care about the effects they have on the environment.

But it’s not just abroad where the American military annihilates the environment and recklessly endangers human life; inside American borders the military all too frequently pollutes the land and kills its own citizens. In November of 2016 the US military announced plans

to dump 20,000 tons of “environmental stressors” into the coastal waters; almost all of the “environmental stressors” were deemed hazardous by the EPA and considered highly toxic at nearly every level. This is probably best compared to the Fukushima disaster where tonnes of toxic waste leaked into the ocean for months almost completely uninterrupted. Additionally, the decades of nuclear- bomb testing created mountains of nuclear waste and expounded plumes of radioactive isotopes into the air. Some of those tests occurred in New Mexico while others occurred in the Marshall Islands— but all of the testing plus the uranium mining necessary created horrendous toxic conditions which forced the American

opinions // no. 25

COz emissions, but the fact that they can't get the space to do so, and it wouldn't make much of a difference makes even the dream seem futile. The millions of kids who once followed Greta Thunberg into the streets have been lulled into passivity and back into their chairs by Fortnite and some other such distractor, and who could blame them? The entire world is built around consumption and entertainment, and nearly every product you buy claims to be good for the environment; sitting at home and recycling is just about the apex of what one can do for the environment if you're not in charge of a multinational organization.

Maybe the reason people have become so silent is simply a “what more can I do?” view of environmental destruction. Taking the bus and trying to use the lowest watt everything is just about the edge of what every individual can do; any more comments on reducing carbon footprints is nearly a willful ignorance of the carbon freight train that underlies the rest of the system. This dejected silence may be the most rational choice of all.

vu u x 5° uw & ft 4 a 8 > 5 Po) ° xo a

government to create the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. Though it’s certainly good to know that the people hurt by these tests may have been compensated, but no such act can remedy what has been done to the environment.

Journalist Abby Martin has been working on a documentary examining all the ways the military has affected the environment and how they may just be the world’s biggest polluters. As the ongoing fight against climate change becomes all the more dire and our window of opportunity closes it may be time to take the fight to the people whose actions most affect the world.