Environmental Ruin

The secretary general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, does not mince words in the Guardian: “Devastating consequences now inevitable but emissions cuts still vital, says António Guterres in sole interview before Cop30”(October 28, 2025). The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the highest United Nations decision-making body for treaties on the environment.

Artificial intelligence gets climate destruction right: “The main causes of environmental degradation are human activities like deforestation, pollution from fossil fuels, unsustainable agriculture, overfishing, and urbanization, driven by factors like population growth and economic patterns. These activities degrade land, water, and air quality, while natural disasters can also lead to significant environmental damage.”

What common Google searches won’t tell the reader is that the military is a massive consumer of fossil fuels and producer of carbon emissions. The US is not alone in that respect.

Both Google searches and the use of artificial intelligence are huge users of fossil fuels.

According to research of the Costs of War Project at the Watson Institute at Brown University about fossil fuel use and the military, the US spends more than any other country on military outlays and keeping the military supplied with fossil fuels is a great part of that cost. In 2011, General David Petraeus said, “Energy is the lifeblood of our warfighting [sic] capabilities.” In fact, the Department of Defense, now war, “is the world’s largest user of petroleum and correspondingly, the single largest institutional producer of greenhouse gasses in the world” (November 11, 2019).

Recall the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline and how private security forces unleashed vicious dogs against protesters fighting the fossil fuel debacle of the pipeline (NPR, February 22, 2017). All but milquetoast demonstrations against environmental destruction have been met with official pushback. Violent repression of protest goes back in time from the 19th century into the present.

An observer might take offense at current military spending with its attendant use, or misuse, of fossil fuels. For FY 2025, $895.2 billion is budgeted and being spent, with an additional $150 billion under consideration. That total is nearly $1 trillion! Contrasted beside this obscene spending, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are soon to be harmed by inaction of the government shutdown, with the availability of medical care potentially reduced by millions of people in the US. The old guns vs. butter equation is at play here, as it has been in the past. In 2023, those SNAP benefits helped 15.4 million children. The guns vs. butter equation also includes the bodies that pile up as the result of wars.

An empire is a very big expense!

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