“WE OPENLY CHALLENGE OURSELVES AND THIS TOXIC SYSTEM –
Leaving our comfort zones to take action for change.” Extinction Rebellion’s Fourth
Principle
Overview. The global climate crisis is absolutely the WORST time for the United States
to wage war (proxy or direct), support Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and maintain over 700
military bases worldwide. No time is a good time for armed conflict and a breakdown of
international law and diplomacy, but to “let slip the dogs of war” in our current
circumstances is madness. We in the climate movement must not ignore or evade this.
Other nations bear their own responsibility for these dire times; however, the United
States, arms dealer to the world with the most expensive military, stomps the heaviest
militarized carbon bootprint on the world, while being historically the largest emitter of
greenhouse gasses from all sources. The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest
single energy consumer in the United States and the world’s largest institutional
greenhouse gas emitter. For a deep dive into these issues, see Professor Neta
Crawford’s book “The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War”.
The current state of the climate crisis. CO2 levels in the atmosphere have spiked up
to nearly 430 ppm, with no sign of peaking let alone reversing. The global temperature
rise of 1.5 degrees Centigrade, an upper limit goal at the Paris Climate Accord in 2015,
has already been breached since 2023. Extreme weather events and enormous, ever-
hotter and smokier wildfires have become normalized, even as the human death tolls
and the destruction of built and natural environments increase. In 2024, NOAA reported
“there were 27 confirmed weather/climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1
billion each to affect United States.” Worldwide, the impacts of global heating on human
health, crop production, and infrastructure hit vulnerable developing countries worst, but
all countries are feeling the pain. No one who remembers the Heat Dome of June 2021
in the Pacific Northwest can ever forget the dystopian dread of those 3 days, and that’s
only one example.
What we need vs what we are getting.
The Extinction Rebellion movement was founded on a demand for governments to tell
the truth of the crisis.
Instead of telling the truth, the U.S. federal government is currently hiding or failing to
conduct research on the climate crisis. On the National Centers for Environmental
Information homepage comes this sad announcement: “In alignment with evolving
priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes, NOAA’s National Centers for
Environmental Information (NCEI) will no longer be updating the Billion Dollar Weather
and Climate Disasters product.” We still need it, but we won’t have that information this
year!
Propaganda about U.S. military actions, such as this Operation Midnight Hammer puff-
piece on the bombing of 3 Iranian nuclear sites, replaces the needed serious
assessments of climate impacts from militarism and war. Reporting on military
emissions to the United Nations from all countries is incomplete or simply missing.
International cooperation is crucial to both mitigation of and adaptation to the climate
crisis (see this report by greenly.earth for many examples).
War, the threat of war, and genocide destroy trust between countries and peoples, and
divert much-needed resources from social needs to death and destruction. The
increased military spending by NATO countries will mean reductions in programs
dealing with climate impacts, as reported here. The projected U.S. military budget of $1
Trillion for 2026 is a sign that more aggressive militarization, both internationally and
within the U.S., is planned. These sinister developments are, of course, exactly the
opposite of Extinction Rebellion US’s 4 th Demand for justice.
Citizens’ assemblies are the most democratic, effective way to develop a just plan for
responses to the climate crisis.
A national U.S. Citizens’ Assembly on climate seems remote. The peaceful but militant
opposition to the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, especially on
college campuses but also in large and small demonstrations across the country, has
been a sort of ad hoc citizens’ assembly. Thus far, the Palestine Solidarity movement
has been violently crushed by police and provocateurs, and ignored/denounced by the
political establishment, as was the Indigenous-led No Dakota Access Pipeline
movement in 2016. However, local versions of citizens’ assemblies could be attempted,
and the Third Demand more widely discussed.
We make the road by walking – where next?
Creating awareness of the climate impacts of war and militarism is a crucial step to
taking action. XRPDX has taken action on these issues, as many climate groups have
NOT. The first-ever slideshow presentation by Veterans For Peace’s Climate Crisis and
Militarism Project was given to XRPDX in 2021; over 130 presentations nationwide, and
several ongoing projects including a “Wake Up Tour” have happened or are happening
since then. In February 2022, XRPDX and allies held an antiwar rally in front of Senator Wyden’s office. Last summer, XRPDX rebels protested in front of the propaganda film
for the Navy’s Blue Angels air shows; their messaging is featured on this webpage.
Making the connections among war, the military-industrial complex, 21 st century
corporate colonialism, and genocide is a powerful way for Extinction Rebellion (and
other climate groups) to stand in solidarity with the peoples of the Global South,
including refugees from war who arrive here. While our erratic would-be King, Donald
Trump, lies and boasts, and the federal government’s ability to research and report the
truth of the climate crisis is severely hampered, we activists can understand, in a more
complex, grim, but ultimately liberating way, the climate-war nexus. And then leave our
comfort zones and work to end war and build peace, climate justice, and human rights!
I’ll leave the last word to the world’s most famous climate activist, who recently put her
life on the line for Palestine Solidarity: Greta Thunberg. “What is happening now in
Gaza is unprecedented, and we do not accept this.” The same could be said, as Greta
knows well, about the climate crisis.
Greta also gives a warning to those with privilege. “If you – in everything that is currently
in terms of escalating imperialism, genocides, climate and ecological collapse, complete
erosion of democracy and human rights – have a platform, but every day continue to
actively choose not to use it and take a stance, then you will not be forgiven.”
