For once, mainstream media is reporting somewhat accurately. Pretty much every media outlet that covered this year’s U.N. climate conference, COP 30, described it as a complete failure when it came to phasing out fossil fuels. And it’s true. A Just Transition Mechanism did come out of COP — which will work to ensure protections for workers, frontline communities, and indigenous peoples in energy transitions. However, the final agreement signed by participating nations did not actually mention fossil fuels even once in the text. And as you might have expected, the topic of militarism — the #1 threat to our planet — went completely unmentioned. None of these so-called "leaders" had anything to say about it. But you know who did? The protestors in the streets outside and at the counter-summits nearby. There are masses of regular people who know that we can't stop climate change without stopping war.
I was disappointed to see that Inside Climate News, one of the country’s largest environmental reporting outlets, failed to mention the demands of these masses in its writing on COP this year. The Pulitzer Prize-winning ICN has been a go-to source for climate news throughout its 18-year history, with almost four million people viewing its website annually. They’ve reported on the ecocide in Gaza, and in previous years, they amplified the call for military emissions to be counted at COP. ICN has the power to shine a light on information that’s been shut out of the conversation. Its readership is organizing against the climate crisis and must understand all ways that the planet is threatened.
As the U.S. expands its war machine, Inside Climate News must tell the story!
The people’s demand to address the environmental degradation caused by militarism has been ignored by the media, in academia, and by mainstream environmental organizations for decades. At COP 3 in 1997, the U.S. successfully lobbied to exempt military emissions from each country’s reported carbon emissions in the Kyoto Protocol. Twenty-eight years later, military emissions still aren’t reported on or even mentioned in official negotiations (which the U.S. has pulled out of completely) — nor are the 800 toxic U.S. military bases across 80 countries, nor the bombs rained on soils across the world, nor the millions of bullets fired in Iraq that continue to have disastrous ecological and health impacts.
It is because of independent research that we know the truth: We cannot take on the climate crisis without uniting against war and militarism, because the U.S. military is the largest institutional polluter in the world. The fossil fuel economy relies on war. Any media outlet that aims to fight for the planet should be very clear about this.
Tell Inside Climate News to report on the demands of the movement!
Inside Climate News, as well as any other outlet that claims to cover the climate crisis, should be calling attention to rapidly expanding militarism. The U.S. is about to pass its newest trillion-dollar Pentagon budget, and we’re watching as it uses those funds to bomb fishermen off the coast of Venezuela, part of an escalation aimed at gaining control over “critical minerals” and the world’s largest oil reserves. This incipient war over resources is a critical climate story, as is the cutting of environmental protections while increasing the size and scope of the U.S. military globally.
ICN could also be looking at writing on the visions for the future proposed at this year’s COP by social movements: This COP, in the face of brutalization from the militarized security presence at COP, the movement was clear-eyed: with adamant demands to demilitarize, remove Israel from the UNCCC for its complicity in genocide and ecocide, to include military emissions in emissions tracking, and to undo the colonialism and extraction from Indigenous territory that the war economy has made possible. The People’s Summit Toward COP 30 brought many of these demands together in a counter-summit of Brazilian and allied international social movements. The final declaration of the People’s Summit — unreported on by most outlets, including ICN — makes 15 clear demands, including demilitarization. It concludes with this:
Every day in CODEPINK’s organizing, I see more and more organizations understand this. More than 120 organizations have signed onto our open letter, Environmentalists Unite: War Fuels the Climate Crisis, including the Sierra Club’s union executive committee. Organizations like the Sunrise Movement are getting engaged in local screenings of the film Earth’s Greatest Enemy, and now co-signing onto marches against war on Venezuela.
The statement is clear: from our organizations to media outlets and to communities, we need to unite our movements and lift up the demands of the people to fight against militarism, imperialism, and colonialism.
Times are changing, and climate outlets like Inside Climate News can follow suit.
👉 For more:
- Join our upcoming webinar: After COP 30: Militarism, the Planet, and the Path Forward on December 21st!
- Check out our toolkit and upcoming Earth’s Greatest Enemy screenings!
- Sign our petition to invite the Sierra Club to join the movement!
- Check out the War Is Not Green webpage to learn more.
- Join our bi-weekly War Is Not Green working group!
- Sign up to organize and engage locally!
Until Liberation,
Aaron, Jodie, and the entire CODEPINK team
