We want to shine a light on the elephant in the room: we can’t fight the climate crisis without ending war and militarism. The targets of the anti-war movement and the environmental movement are one and the same. Oil-driven and literally fueled US militarism is one of the largest drivers of local and global climate catastrophe in the world, with the US military, as the Pentagon, is the world’s largest institutional polluter. In order to save the planet, we need to resist militarism.
Yet in the Global North, in the US, the movement is siloed. We see this in funding and philanthropy disparities. After an initial email to them, we’re bringing a public ask, because the Sierra Club has a lot of power: a 3.8 million-person membership base, and as of 2023, over 195 million in revenue. Frankly, they have a lot of power in injecting these connections into media, into philanthropy, and into their base. If we’re building a united movement for the people and planet, we need to know who our united targets are. That’s why we want to give an offering to some climate organizations that could really play a large role in helping to spotlight this elephant, starting with the Sierra Club: one of the oldest and largest environmental organizations in the U.S.
We, the undersigned are writing to underscore the importance of standing against war, imperialism, and militarism in order to adhere to your mission to “protect the wild places of the earth,” to “practice and promote the responsible use of the Earth’s ecosystems and resources,” and to “educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment.”
We are organizers, advocates, environmentalists who fully support this mission, which is why we are actively standing against the war machine. The U.S. military is the largest institutional polluter in the world. It is also one of the single largest vehicles for maintaining oil extraction, with U.S. interventions in West Asia and Northern Africa between 2001 and 2017 emitting more than 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. And the U.S. military’s over 800 military bases globally have a well-documented history of jet fuel leaks, PFAS chemical contamination, and violations of indigenous and national land sovereignty, as your Hawai’i chapter has worked on. The genocide in Gaza has completely destroyed the water, air, and soil quality, which will take decades to even get close to being suitable for agriculture again. Meanwhile, it has emitted more than 100 countries combined, which takes a toll on island nations and low-income communities of color the most.
It is clear that if we don’t address militarism and the global impact of the war machine, we will not be able to address the climate crisis. If we don’t break down the silos between the largest anti-war movement in decades and the environmental movement that ultimately has the same targets, we risk everything. To save the planet, we need to cut the Pentagon, and we need to follow the lead of struggles in the Global South around the world, which have resisted militarism and are local struggles for the land.
The extractive industries that war and militarism support and the Military Industrial Complex have worked hard so you don’t know this information. That is why we call it the elephant in the room. We support your mission and want to help, that is why we are here shining a light on the elephant in the room for you. We hope after learning about the costs of war to the planet you will add ending wars to your work.
We invite you to join the 100 organizations that have signed on to our letter Environmentalists Unite: War Fuels the Climate Crisis, or to use other means to effect this horror for the planet. You have a great deal of influence and teach your membership about the harms they can engage to end; add wars.