Washington, DC — The recent military attacks between the US and Iran sounded the alarm of a potential new world war, worrying the international community and people everywhere.
On the consequences of the attacks, Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, 350.org North America Director issued the following:
“In times of climate crisis we need global solidarity and the ties of community more than ever. The climate movement is aligned with all efforts for peace and justice. As a global movement we are committed to a practice that transcends borders and cultural differences, and stands up to confront the common existential threat of climate breakdown. We unequivocally condemn the recent action by the executive and the instinct to meet violence with more violence. It is a political reaction that brings with it the unsavory stench of diversion from real threats, and feeds a narrative of endless war with no consideration of the immense climate impacts.”
“The climate crisis and warmongering multiply threats to communities already made vulnerable, including migrants, climate refugees, the chronically poor and underserved, black, indigenous and people of color. The posture of this administration and the supremacist tendencies underlying it are creating conflict to cover its tracks. This President should not recklessly risk peoples’ lives. We’ve seen it in the past, and in the climate decade we should be looking towards the new future we want to build.”
The consequences of the attacks go beyond the deaths that the missiles themselves can cause. According to a research from Brown University’s Costs of War project, the Pentagon makes up 77 to 80 percent of the entire U.S. government’s energy consumption. The paper says the US Department of Defense spews so much greenhouse gas every year that it would rank as the 55th worst polluter in the world if it were a country, beating out Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal.
Tamara Toles O’Laughlin also said:
“The climate crisis will continue to spur of conflicts in many parts of the world as resources become scarce due to drought, floods, displacement, migration and other compounding factors. The last thing we need now is a war we can neither afford or abide. We have spent our carbon diet and that is a big enough signal that we should focus on being leaders of a peaceful, efficient and just transition away from fossil fuels – not on another war that has oil access as an important subtext.”
“We do not need to spend trillions on war, weapons and violence. We do need a Green New Deal that halts the use of coal, oil and gas, and holds fossil fuels executives accountable for exacerbating climate change. We need elected officials at all levels to direct the resources they’d put toward war to instead back bold climate policy that creates millions of sustaining jobs in a just transition towards a 100% renewable economy. We need solutions to overcome the crisis we are already in, not fuel to further inflame it.”