U.S. Military Is World’s Biggest Polluter | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Military Is World’s Biggest Polluter

ecowatch.com

92 pointsumadon23 comments

I am having trouble validating this claim:

"U.S. military action there has resulted in the desertification of 90 percent of Iraqi territory, crippling the country's agricultural industry and forcing it to import more than 80 percent of its food"

I can't find any citations in the source - most of the places I am looking talk about the destruction of irrigation systems at the hand of the Iraqi state. So at best the military is only partly responsible.

I'm not fan of the American propensity for projecting power with guns, but this article seems to be more than a little bit biased.

* The uranium mines mentioned belonged to the DOE.

* The link purportedly explaining why we caused desertification in Iraq carries no sources explaining this, other than a vague mention of US military policies (which in most cases are civilian political policies).

* The article in language is saying the military is currently the worlds biggest polluter, while mostly touching on issues from the cold war, before there were environmental rules of note.

This doesn't even touch on the absolute environmental devastation that the Soviet system left too.

In General the Military-Industrial complex is dirty, and left in its wake over the 40 years of the cold war, an environmental mess than will take 80 years to clean up, but that doesn't make any military currently the worlds largest anything, except possibly a waste of money.

The USA military fills a space that would be filled by another power if there was no USA military.

I personally don't want that to be China. Not because I think they'd do a bunch of crazy things but because I think they'd slowly and methodically subvert other countries just like they're doing in the South China Sea.

While I agree 1000% we need to minimize the USA military, we also need a plan for other (UN) countries to contribute to a shared force or something similar that can police in place of the USA military. Even in turn policing the USA in cases of military overstepping.

EDIT: What I'm saying is this article points to a problem, but it's complex. I imagine with UN oversight a military force might actually be less of a polluter and we might slow down arms races as well.

Why should there be any superpower policing other countries? IMO, China, like any other country strong enough to put up a fight, so to speak, acts out of self-preservation. It's understandable if you look at US' decades long foreign policies.

Why are police necessary anywhere? To enforce the rules of the land that enact peace and order.

China is trying to steal territory from the Philippines, they arguably don't have the power to fight China. Without allies in the USA they'd have no recourse.

If every country was equal I'd agree with you, but they aren't, so we need protections for the smaller countries out there that get rolled over by the big countries.

Edit: Ideally we wouldn't need a police force, and I don't use Police force to mean what the US is doing in the middle east. I'm all about anti-interventionist policies. But I also don't want to see big governments roll over smaller ones, I think the UN is a good counter to that.

This is what I meant by South China Sea. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c... Hopefully that link resolves correclty.

>Why are police necessary anywhere? To enforce the rules of the land that enact peace and order.

A police force is something formally established and democratically controlled. And it should not have private interests of its own, even less so on the same domain as the people it protects.

A superpower/global cop is a self-selecting entity that serves its own interests, and answers to no one.

That is exactly what I'm saying.

EDIT: With the caveat that. end edit.

In the absence of said democratically controlled police force I think the USA military is not the worst substitute. It's not a good one, but it's better than having no counter to other forces.

I would like to clarify. I want a UN controlled military of the size of the US military patrolling the world. NOT the USA. I'm only saying in the absence of a formally established "governing" body to world powers, we need them to be at a stalemate in power.

>In the absence of said democratically controlled police force I think the USA military is not the worst substitute. It's not a good one, but it's better than having no counter to other forces.

I dunno, WWII aside, the worst offenders of meddling with other countries, toppling governments, invading, plundering, and promoting their own interests, etc, in the 20th and 21st century, globally, were the US and USSR.

Not some "rogue states", especially not the small ones, who can't seriously do much to anybody outside their immediate borders anyway...

That's a fair point. But if we also compare the meddling in this century to those past this one has had the fewest deaths due to war, famine, etc. This is, from what I've seen, a commonly held principle is fundamental to my belief that the US isn't as bad as what we've had historically. If that is wrong then I need to re-evaluate my entire opinion here.

Again, I'm 100% not saying the US is perfect or should be in this role. I'm just kinda extrapolating that based on what previous super powers have done the USA/USSR are less aweful.

That could also be to religion losing a lot of it's hold over superpowers, but IDK that's pure speculation on my part.

I also want to say, I get your position and WANT the US out of it's role too. I know this is probably weird for an American to say but I'm super glad that there are other powers out there to push back on the US. I could see us running amok a lot more if there weren't.

> I want a UN controlled military of the size of the US military patrolling the world.

To get a US-sized military from Europe, you would need to require most EU states to triple their current GDP allocated on military. That might make it difficult to fund other things.

>To get a US-sized military from Europe, you would need to require most EU states to triple their current GDP allocated on military.

Well, a lot of that is wasted on wars like Iraq and bureaucracy and waste (e.g. the failed new plane designs).

Given that, they could have a US-sized military in Europe with their current GDP allocation or close, minus the waste.

Nobody outside China thinks what's going on in the South China Sea has anything to do with "self-preservation".

Well, for one, I'm not so sure about that, and I'm not inside China...

And what is somewhat amusing, is that the DoD has labelled energy independence as a critical factor for the military to have. As a result, they're been spending the last 10-15 years working on the tech for things like military microgrids and whatnot.

https://www.nrdc.org/experts/christian-stirling-haig/budget-...

https://www.energydigital.com/renewable-energy/us-military-w...

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/for-the-u-s-mil...

I'm not saying there isn't a long way to go, but they're definitely aware of the problem.

The US military is also one of if not the largest organization in the world. So this is unsurprising.

The Runit Dome (concrete dome designed to contain nuclear waste) is leaking highly toxic and radioactive garbages out.[1][2] It's pretty nasty out there - let alone the environmental impact.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Island

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19959889

are militaries in general just producing lots of toxic things (not surprising), and the US has the biggest footprint because it has the biggest military? or, is the us just particularly bad on a per unit basis

Any military that has jets, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, etc. will have the same pollution problems as the US military. The US military is just so much bigger than everybody else's for a variety of complex reasons.

Also, it's a bit unfair to say "US Military" as if it is a single unified organization. I would bet the US Navy specifically is the biggest offender.

I bet "US Military" is smaller than "China Factories" though.

Military by definition has the attitude to achieve a single objective through any means possible. It's not exactly surprising that they don't care much about other things. In addition if you are a soldier you often are in pretty bad situations is following some environmental rules is just another burden.

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