Climate change has become one of the major problems of this world. Environmental changes have become inevitable and also it has led to many problems. Marx had said in one of his works that, “the division between town and country led to the loss of soil fertility while at the same time imposing a great burden of pollution and disease in the urban city.” There has to be a rational relationship between nature and the rest of the world. But human, because of their nature wants to control everything from means of production to changes happening in nature.
Recently, declassified files released by the US National Security Archive reveal the Extent of paranoid and aggressive American bullying in negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol, a historic agreement of the 1990s agreement. Is obliged by almost every country in the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Research conducted by Durham and Lanchester University published in 2019 revealed that the US military is “one of the largest climate polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more CO2 than most countries”.
Still, Joe Biden has declared climate change to be the highest threat to national security, although cynically the real fear is that environmental destruction could mean unprofitable for the US defense budget. A confidential State Department cable from late 1997 advised UN Ambassador Mark Hambley to seek a “national security exemption relating to military activities that are directly in support of peace-making.” Despite acknowledging that the US military is the “single biggest user of energy” by the US.
Department of Defence accounts for just 1.4% of the total carbon emission, with military operations and training contributing just 0.8%. This was briefed in March 1998, by the key White House adviser, and though this was challenged claiming, “amount to less than one-half of one percent of total US greenhouse gas emissions”. It is completely impossible to reconcile a commitment to seriously tackling of greenhouse gas emissions with also maintaining an expansive globe-spanning network of trucks, planes, and ships. The combination of begging, bribing, and bullying resulted in coalition of the willing countries. Japan and a number of other nations reliant on the US military- including Canada, Australia, new Zealand, and Switzerland have pledged support to national security exemptions to emission targets.
These declassified documents reveals that between choice of global ‘security’ and ‘nature’, Pentagon and the White House will always choose the latter- at the expanse of the environment, and human life. The question for hamlet was “to be or not be” and if the same question crops up before US whether its “climate or military power”. Then the latter will be chosen because humans have always tried to prove its superiority through controlling everything in its possession.
