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War is Warming Revisited. Dedicated to Pache Mama
(Mother Earth).
By mickielynn on 2010-04-25 07:50:32
All during this Earth Week I've been reading about and listening to the ideas coming from the climate change meetings in
Cochabamba, Bolivia. The results of a popular, international meeting of around 15,000 climate justice activists,
environmentalists and indigenous people conducting working groups to bring about real change in the way we live on the
Earth. This motivated me to share with you a leaflet that Grannies for Peace distributed in 2007.
On Saturday, April 14, 2007, at the Lake House in Albany's Washington Park, Women Against War co-sponsored the event
as part of Step It Up 2007, one of many events held in the area and around the country calling for changes in US climate
policies.
The event included speakers, music, food, and discussion sessions, followed by a rally and march to the Capitol. Other
sponsors included the Honest Weight Food Coop and many local environmental and peace and justice groups. We were able
to distribute many copies of our flyer at the event. Others were handed out in the community during the following week.
At that time, our connection between war and warming focused on the Iraq war. This was the text of the flyer:
WAR IS VERY WARMING
Women Against War speaks from our understanding of the connection between the way we treat the earth and the way we
treat each other.
Violence against women and violence against the environment grow out of the same way of seeing the world: that some
people are more valuable than others and have the right to exploit the earth and others for their own pleasure and profit.
We can no longer allow the earth and its inhabitants to be scorched by war to protect the privilege of the powerful.
Climate change requires us to change our thinking:
1. Collective human security can no longer rest on narrow "national security".
2. US military action to access oil and other diminishing resources will only speed up global warming. War will further
overheat our world. Settling disputes by diplomacy and international cooperation must become our first, second, and
third approaches to conflict resolution, replacing violence.
3. Because US carbon emissions have disproportionately set in motion climate changes which will devastate the
poorest, most vulnerable countries — the US must generously share with them technical and financial resources.
e Think of the Iraq war’s contribution to climate change: "Shock & Awe" bombing and 4 years of missiles fired from
heavy armored vehicles, house to house fighting, aerial bombardments of Fallujah, Ramadi & Baghdad, burning
pipelines and power plants, an unleashed civil war....
e Think of the Iraq War and the current Bush expansion of military bases in oil rich areas — not just for oil company
profits — but as a desperate energy-wasting effort to postpone conversion to a renewable energy society.
e Think of the women & children displaced in drought-scorched Darfur — human victims of land and water conflicts.
The world’s new climate change refugees — fleeing violent competition for life-supporting land.
And now we have the 2010, Afghanistan focused, information from the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice flyer.
http:/Awnpj.org/node/3781
Replacing an SUV with a Toyota Prius will save the average driver 560 gallons of gas a year.
An F-15 fighter on takeoff would burn this much fuel in only two minutes
An Abrams tank, which gets a half a mile per gallon, burns this much fuel in only 280 miles of driving.
A B-52 bomber consumes this much fuel in ten minutes
A platoon of 25 soldiers in Afghanistan uses this much fuel in one day.
We'll never get control of our greenhouse-gas emissions unless we can rein in the military, which is burning 3.5 million
gallons of fuel every day on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
New light bulbs and hybrid cars aren't enough, we've got to rethink a foreign policy based on endless war.
The Earth can’t afford war any more.
