David Schwartzman's Comment on E. Goldfield's "There Is No Such Thing As A Green War"

David Schwartzman's Comment on E. Goldfield's "There Is No Such Thing As A Green War", 7/12/2019

The subtitle makes the essential point, "The Military Industrial Complex [MIC] Is A Major Contributor To Climate Change--This Calls For A Merger Of Anti-War, Climate And Refugee Solidarity Movements." But what about the merger with the anti-imperialist movement, focusing on checking and terminating the MIC's imperial regime change agenda? The MIC, with the Pentagon at its service, uses economic warfare with the continued threat of armed aggression in the case of Venezuela and Iran, countries not mentioned in this article. Ex., like a recent article from Yes magazine (link) the Pentagon's GHG emissions is highlighted. But these emissions are commonly exaggerated. Both articles cite Crawford's (2019) report which gives 59 million metric tons for 2017 or 0.11% of the global GHG CO2 equivalent emissions for that year (UNEP 2018, Emissions Gap Report). Crawford's (2019) report gives 1.2 billion metric tons of GHG since the beginning of the "Global War on Terror" in 2001, or no more than 0.15% of the cumulative total of global GHG CO2 equivalent emissions in that period (Olivier et al., 2017, Figure 2.1, plus adding data for 2016 and 2017).
This confirms the point we made in our book: "Military spending and the MIC's [Military Industrial Complex] Imperial Agenda are the critical obstacles posed by the MIC, not the sizable, but widely exaggerated greenhouse gas emissions of the Pentagon itself" (p. 101, The Earth is Not for Sale).

Cited:
Crawford, Neta C. (2019) Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War, (Link).
Olivier, J.G.J., K.M. Schure, J.A.H.W. Peters (2017) Trends in global CO2 and total greenhouse gas emissions: 2017 Report, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency The Hague, PBL publication number: 2674.