Conor here: Maybe the NGOs aren’t going to save us.
By Aaron Kirshenbaum, CODEPINK’s War is Not Green campaigner and East Coast regional organizer. Cross posted from Common Dreams.
On December 15, many people in Syria felt the earthquake. Seismic scales registered above 3.0 on the Richter scale and could be felt at least 500 miles away. Natural disasters usually have the attention of people around the world. When earthquakes happen, humanitarian workers and supplies are sent to help out. After hurricanes, organizations release statements responding to the urgency of the climate crisis and hypothetical transitions away from fossil fuels.
In Syria, what happened on December 15 wasn’t an earthquake—it was a massive airstrike that Israel carried out in Syria. This ongoing bombardment is reciprocally destructive to daily life and the environment as it continues to push the climate crisis further through jarring fossil fuel consumption.
But where are the environmental organizations? Many organizations that would typically release these statements after “natural” disasters have been silent. Except this was not a natural disaster—and the countries that would typically send “humanitarian aid” are the ones that caused this quake to happen. This deliberate mass destruction came shortly after the U.S. dropped dozens of bombs in just a few hours after the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The bewildering longtime silence of environmental organizations when it comes to U.S. militarism is not representative of any genuine commitment to climate justice. The most heavily weighted factors in their silence may be a blissful ignorance from the normalization of a whitewashed “environmentalism,” or the fear of repression and financial repercussions of taking popular anti-war stances. Regardless, the murderous result is antithetical to everything they profess.
A June 2024 United Nations report on the environmental impact of the genocide in Gaza highlighted the catastrophic impacts of Israel’s incessant bombing on the ecosystem, water quality, air quality, and soil in Gaza. Genocide doesn’t just cause ecocide, isn’t just parallel to ecocide, but is also a result of ecocide. Ecocide is a tactic of genocide. The long-term damage to every ecological foundation in Gaza makes it harder and harder to sustain life. Life can’t be sustained without agriculture or without clean drinking water. And now, the U.S. and Israel are attempting to repeat this cycle of destruction in Syria, just as they have started to in Lebanon.
Regardless of how hard the imperialism and war economy of Western powers try to create a lavish life for its beneficiaries at the expense of everyone else, it is fundamentally impossible to sustain life for anyone when war-making tools continue to devastate the planet. The grim irony is that the war economy eats its own makers.
The first 120 days of the genocide in Gaza alone produced more emissions than 26 countries combined. Every new base that is established across the globe contaminates the soil that it occupies, harming the ecosystem and the valuable biodiversity that is critical for sustaining life. As it builds bases over occupied land globally, the military literally steamrolls over survival.
Now, the U.S. and Israel are taking advantage of a destabilized Syria to eat away at the nation’s territory to gain more standing in a dangerous escalation against Iran. This is the newest development in a decades-long conquest for dominance in the oil industry that environmental organizations have long campaigned shifts away from. The U.S. has carried out this disastrous project through the extraction of oil in the ground for the sake of extracting more oil from the ground, destroying homes, families, and nations in the process, all while stumbling into the possibility of planetary destruction via climate collapse, nuclear winter, or both.
U.S.-made Israeli bombs have killed multiple civilians in Yemen in the past weeks. Meanwhile, the “cease-fire” reached in Lebanon continues to be breached as toxic bombs rain down on the people of the country daily, while fossil fuels are unleashed in the sky, which has already led to island nations that toxic U.S. bases occupy becoming inhabitable.
Since Assad’s fall, Israel has claimed more land in Syria than all of Gaza. The more that Israel and its allies encroach on this land, the more emboldened the U.S.-Israeli regime becomes in its terrorism throughout the region and the more it risks our global future. The short- and long-term survival of the people of Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen are increasingly threatened due to ecological devastation while they fight to prevent U.S.-made bombs from continuing to destroy their homes every single day. Is their disposability so blinding that these NGOs sacrifice themselves? The longer we escalate, the more emissions will be released from this catastrophe and the longer that crucial biodiversity and Indigenous caretaking will be destroyed.
So, amid this war that is causing complete ecological and planetary devastation, where is the mainstream climate movement? When the U.S. military is the largest institutional polluter in the world, consuming 4.6 billion gallons of fuel annually (77-80% of all U.S. government energy consumption), how can its deadliest campaign in years be ignored by those who seek to protect the planet? When the bombs the U.S. manufactures register on the Richter scale, how is that not a threat to the environment? How is nuclear winter not a threat to agricultural global survival? How can the groups that claim to care about our well-being not stand against a deadly bombing campaign in Syria and possible war with Iran or Russia?
The anti-war movement from within the U.S. is at its strongest in decades. The majority of Americans want a cease-fire in Gaza. The environmental movement from within the belly of the beast must recognize that it needs to be part of this anti-war movement and push for the U.S. to take its hands off Syria. It must raise the public’s consciousness of the dangers of war with Iran. When we think about existential threats to the planet, environmental organizations should be looking at the ecological devastation that Israel and the U.S. are causing and ask themselves why they haven’t done or said a damn thing about the elephant in the room.
This article never went where I expected it to go. Has the possibility that Israel/US dropped a low-yield nuclear weapon on Syria been credibly debunked and I missed it? Why is *nobody* talking about this any more? I admit to seeing no limits on escalation by these countries; and their control of information, their ability to silence nearly everyone is well known now. Please knock my tin foil hat off my head.
I also expected that to be addressed in this article. Haven’t seen any updates since early seismic readings and radiological readings from an island in the Mediterranean.
Same here, however I expected him write less about human rights(we know that) but much more about the pollution-via-war-and-arms-industry issue which is not being talked about and totally off radar in comparison.
So in that too it’s a missed opportunity.
But as such it is an important piece still to at least send to people and highlight those few hyperlinks he does provide.
Of course Ukraine War he fails to talk about. What are the pollution numbers there in relation to other wars and the environment issue in general?
Ted Postol on Nima’s Dialogue Works channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UGsBLDwhHg
Short answer, no.
Say, does anybody remember the time that Biden illegally blew up the NS2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea which released some 150 thousand tonnes of methane into the atmosphere and straight away people like Greta Thunberg and organizations like Greenpeace demanded immediate answers about who did this because of the damage done to the environment? No, I don’t remember any of that happening either. If you are looking at environmental organizations to speak up about such things, I am here to say that those organizations have all been compromised and a demonstration of that was the suppression of that ‘Planet of the Humans’ documentary back in 2020 by these very same organizations-
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/green-billionaires-planet-of-the-humans/
That Grayzone link is today’s Must Read. From 2020?
I am wondering why I don’t remember it, or the movie… fog and dither of the first plague in my 65 years?
It’s a weak excuse. Thank you!
Thanks for fetching MB’s piece from the Memory Hole, Rev. A well-sourced, well-written, eye-opening article.
I tried to bring Nordstream up to the person at Food and Water Watch who was leading the campaign to stop liquid natural gas transport from Pennsylvania shale fields to a new port in NJ. “Bomb trains” etc. I said ‘don’t you think the US blew it up and isn’t that a problem for this issue? Isn’t the pressure to export to Europe going to increase.’ The result was a totally blank expression… I didn’t want to badger her so I dropped it.
But despite the obvious link between the need for developing the infrastructure to export LNG and the geopolitics taking place in Europe / Ukraine…. foreign policy and the US proxy war is never ever brought up in any communication I have seen from FWW or any other domestic NGO addressing the dangers of LNG or any other issues around environmental justice or climate change.
Despite some over the top but often abstract rhetoric about the need for radical systemic change, I find that NGO’s that I work with are rather conservative since they need achievable metrics that can be reported as deliverables to their funders… and I doubt that taking on the war machine is ever listed as a deliverable in their grant agreement.
>”I didn’t want to badger her so I dropped it”
yes. I have the same problem. So what do I do?
I am being polite. Since like everyone else I am being trained to ease everyday exchange and avoid fierce arguments. Otherwise admittedly it might happen that I explode. (I had enough bad experience early 2022.)
But one of the biggest obstacles in organizing or at least raising awareness via simple conversing is this.
p.s. Old folks fom antiwar in Germany are wondering why so little public resistance. Well it’s not that difficult: Compare to the 1970s/80s or 1950s – we had the left parties, the church, the unions, the newspapers, sometimes even TV (!). None of this today. If there are no institutions that discuss masse protest or do make the issue public people won’t act in big numbers.
Planet of the Humans was not perfect. But it was sensible. Green New Deal hopium is no solution to anything except profits for that sector of Big Energy. The only way to back out of this crack is to lessen throughput through the “economy.” This can be done intentionally or not. The latter, more likely, will be very ugly. Bill McKibben was the lowlight of the documentary for me. I don’t think he realizes he destroyed his credibility outside of his “The Movement” when he was asked who funds 350.org and acted like the question was out of bounds and refused to answer while spouting some gibberish. I read his The End of Nature (1989) when it came out and most of his subsequent books. I met him at a multi-author presentation about mountaintop removal in Appalachia, in which he and his coworkers were impressive. I expected more, naif that I can be sometimes.
In reviews of his political life over the past week some have noted that Jimmy Carter would have tackled energy and climate change in his second term. Given his technocratic but thoroughly (early) neoliberal mindset, perhaps. Anyway, imagine the results…
Whatever about its overall political points, Planet of the Humans assessment of renewables and technology is simply junk science and was debunked many times when it was released – many of these were in the science blogosphere and unfortunately are hard to find now on google. Moore was taken in by some faux leftist think tanks (they are pervasive in that space) which insist on ignoring the numerous studies on lifecycle analyses (among many other things the film got badly wrong).
There is simply no excuse for the falsehoods put forward as ‘facts’ in the film. Focusing on the hypocrisies of any individual campaigners is just a form of ad hominem and a distraction from the real issues.
I’ll stand by my argument that decreasing throughput is the only solution. The problem with renewables is they are a technical fix to an existential (sorry, but the word fits here) problem that has been sold as the path to continuing economic growth as our way of life, now and forever, amen. This will not succeed in the end. Renewables as a long bridge to a more sustainable future with a manageable decline? Yes, but that is not the message. Accounting for the externalities of so-called green energy is legitimate.
Chopping down trees to make wood pellets to make electricity for a post-industrial economy is not “green” in any way, shape, or form. The trees grow back but the timelines are off. And if the trees are part of a real forest instead of a tree plantation, the forest is gone, forever, on a human-in-the-ecosphere timescale. However, retreating from car culture is as green as it gets, whether the car is powered by an internal combustion engine or a battery. But a Tesla makes its owner feel all warm and fuzzy inside, which is the point. A Tesla is just another dicey “carbon offset.” For a while here the license plate on a Tesla or other EV read “Emission Free Vehicle.” Actually, no. The emissions were about 25 miles up the road at a very large coal-fired plant (coal trains from Montana, ~2000 miles away). One can calculate that emissions per mile are less with the Tesla, but the most recent analysis I read puts a Tesla at carbon-neutral at seven years. The clock resets when the battery must be replaced, if the car lasts that long.
If my point about Bill McKibben is viewed as ad hominem as I look at eight of his books on the shelf, I regret that. But it seems legitimate to point out this particular emperor is naked and has feet of clay.
I agree that only dramatic reductions in energy use can work. Its very difficult to disentangle the wood from the trees so to speak when dealing with renewables and various forms of new tech, but the reality is that to achieve a rapid reduction, applying known technologies is a vital part of the solution, and the huge growth in solar energy (in particular) is a rare bright point.
Just to clarify, I did not mean to imply you were making an ad hominem, I was referring to the film and its use of ‘gotchas’ on people like McKibbon as (in my opinion) a way of distracting from the lack of technical substance in its arguments. My apologies if I expressed myself badly on that point.
I’d almost forgotten the film – I’m disappointed to see its still circulating. At the time, there were some very detailed technical rebuttals published in the blogosphere and on YouTube, but it seems that the film is still floating around while the sensible responses have more or less disappeared.
Thanks to Conor for making this thread and to the Rev for bringing my attention to the film Planet of the Humans. It is still available for viewing on YouToob.
How many military bases does the US have outside its border? I have read that it’s over 750. Yet, environmental organizations are not raising holy hell.
I can’t speak for the authors circle of contacts, but almost all my old environmental friends from when I was an active campaigner on energy and climate change issues are equally involved now in trying to support Palestine.
The article seems to be straining to try to connect the issue of war with environmental destruction. Of course war is enormously destructive, but in comparison to our modern lifestyles, it really is almost irrelevant. Throwing around weird factoids like ‘the war in Gaza produced the emissions of 26 countries’ is kinda irrelevant unless you have figures and context. And when you look at the overall global context, it’s very minor.
The planet is nearing collapse because of our grossly inefficient transport, heating and cooling systems, our taste for meat and cheap food, and our consumerism. If anything, war has generally helped the climate – the only substantive reversal of CO2 emissions in the 20th century was during WWII. I don’t think anyone has done a full analysis of the Ukraine war, but it would seem likely that wildlife has been one of the big winners – vast areas are reverting to wilderness, and many a coal fired plant is now rubble.
There are many, many reasons to support the Palestinians and stop the genocide in Gaza. But tying it to CO2 emissions or water pollution ranks very far down the list.
Well said!
‘ 26 countries’ is probably arrived at by adding up countries like Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tonga, etc. etc.etc.
The amount of carbon released by Israel in attacking Gaza is such a small percent of the world release of carbon that it makes me think that it is a “concern” concocted as an “any stick to beat the dog” when the relevant and applicable sticks should be sufficient.
same reason why i consider any environmentalist as either naive, or a con artist, that does not address free trade as a huge driver of climate change and war.
Remember Elizabeth Warren’s 2019 bill to “green” the Pentagon with the “DoD Climate Resilience and Readiness Act”? It didn’t go anywhere back then, but she reintroduced it this December with the endorsement of the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, Public Citizen, and Earthjustice.
As Lily Tomlin’s put it: “No matter how cynical you become, it’s not enough to keep up.”
This is the first time I have felt what it is like to be in WWIII. May all the gods help us!!
> But where are the environmental organizations?
The mainstream environmental organizations both stoke and benefit from climate fears, something akin to a moral panic, to justify their existence and lavish and often tax free salaries for senior staff. (Lavish = c USD 1m at WWF, TNC, CI, UNEP etc). They have powerful communications teams which whip up social anxiety with statements like “10 years to save the planet”. The job of these organizations is not to risk their public funding streams.
Are environmental problems real? Yes. Do mainstream environmental organizations overstate these problems for their own ends. Also yes. Are mainstream environmental organizations non-government organizations in a true sense. No.