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Comment by kolbe | Hacker News Reader

This provides absolutely no basis for comparison, jut a few slightly quantitative anecdotes. I am, without doing any research, supremely confident that US civilians and private industry are far more environmentally destructive than the US military in 2017.

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"The U.S. military is the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world. Every year, our armed forces consume more than 100 million barrels of oil to power ships, vehicles, aircraft, and ground operations—enough for over 4 million trips around the Earth, assuming 25 mpg."

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/smart-transportation-so...

Right, the single biggest maybe. But more than US citizens combined, as the parent comment indicates? No.

Right, but the US military is top down control, which means changes are easier versus herding hundreds of millions of individual consumers to the right solutions.

Nobody likes a dictatorship until something needs to get done fast.

Not only top down, but 100% accountable to the government already. No new laws necessary (under Bush, Obama, or Trump). In fact, MOST Americans want to end these useless dragging wars.

Really reveals how much they truly care about pollution versus posturing for more control.

Scary how ive been censored on here. Flagged, buried, and couldn’t answer any comment till now. I’m done with HN.

It's quite possible that the US military is a bigger polluter than any private corporation or government agency. It's an organization of truly colossal size.

But the sum of all US corporations is, in aggregate, much, much larger.

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