On Earth Day, we have a message to share: if you truly care about the environment and climate change’s impact on our world, you need to join the fight against US imperialism and the war machine. So long as the US empire stands, so will some of the biggest polluters of our environment.
Earthday.org details the harms of plastics, promotes tree planting, and gives opportunities for people to get plugged into local cleanups, all as tactics to protect the planet, but what the official Earth Day website doesn’t share is one of the most violent and dangerous polluters: The US Military.
The US military is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases of any institution on Earth and one of the largest polluters in history. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, “reduce, reuse, recycle” has become blatantly insufficient when it comes to combatting the dangerous rate of climate change we find ourselves in today. While in recent years that been growing concerns over holding large polluting corporations accountable rather than just relying on individual actions (which alone are insufficient), what continues to lack is the fact that the US military is not often included in this push toward accountability.
On April 7th, after Trump threatened to destroy an entire civilization, the US and Iran reached a 2-week conditional ceasefire agreement. The Strait of Hormuz will open, and ships will be taxed while they negotiate Iran’s 10-point peace plan. The war is “over”, but the US must pay for its crimes.
We cannot let our guard down and expect the US and Israel to uphold this truce. Israel has already violated the ceasefire by bombing Lebanon the day after, killing at least 254 people and wounding more than 1,165.
The US failed spectacularly in its goal of securing Iranian oil and toppling the Islamic Republic, but it devastated Iran in the process. Over 2,000 Iranians were killed, including 200 schoolgirls.
All of this is, unfortunately, just the latest in a 250-year history of atrocities. That’s 250 years too many.
No politician will put an end to these brutalities, no policy can undo the web of control that the US has over the globe. The truth is, only ridding ourselves of this system altogether will serve as justice to the people of the world.
Join us to protest 250 years of empire this year on the 4th of July in Philadelphia! All empires fall… sometimes they need a push.