Time to Organize for World Water Day and Earth Day

The colorful Climate Justice Women + Peace banner is 2.5 x 6 feet and can be ordered in time for World Water Day and Earth Day.

By Nancy Price
Co-chair, Earth Democracy Issue Committee

March 2020

Time to spring forward! Make your plans now to celebrate World Water Day on Sunday, March 22, and prepare for the 50^th Anniversary of Earth Day on Wednesday, April 22. Let’s educate, organize, mobilize, and strike.

In time for World Water Day and Earth Day, order now the new, updated Climate Justice+Women+Peace cards and, if you don’t already have them, either or both of the colorful Climate Justice+Women+Peace and Peace and Planet Before Profit banners.

World Water Day – Sunday, March 22

This year the World Water Day theme is water and climate.

For World Water Day, it’s time to hold the military responsible for their oversize carbon “bootprint” that accelerates global warming and leads to increased drought and fires, water and food insecurity, and severe weather events that result in extreme human suffering and biodiversity loss. Heavy rains, floods, and rising sea levels all wash toxic chemicals that are carelessly used, stored, and discarded on bases into drinking water sources and into the oceans. This contamination includes PFAS "forever chemicals" linked to numerous chronic and life-threatening illnesses. 

Climate and Peace. Today, the connection between our economic system of unbridled consumer capitalism and ecological destruction is well understood. But as Nick Buxton writes, “While politicians have proved unable to make the decisions necessary to stop worsening climate change, they have not found it difficult to find funding for ‘security’ needs, pointing out that the massive growth of the military-security-industrial-complex at the time of climate change’s impact has become more and more obvious.” He emphasizes: “the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

Let’s be clear: Our military…

• is the single largest user of oil and gas for fleets of ships, planes, trucks, tanks etc., to  maintain services at its 800 bases worldwide and for the global transport of troops and material to zones of conflict and war.  
• should add to the "costs of war" the oil and gas that fuels its global supply chain for raw materials and that is needed for the manufacture and distribution of equipment, parts, food, medicines, clothing, and much more. These dollars are mainly spent by the military-industrial complex of corporate suppliers, but should be calculated into the military’s carbon “bootprint.”
• has a carbon “bootprint” that is exempt from the UN Paris Climate Agreement that Trump rejected.
• increasingly is involved in conflict because people are forced to resist to survive, to stand their ground to protect natural resources, or to migrate, only to be met with harsh repression and conflict.

Conclusion: I am not making the case here for a green, sustainable military with a reduced carbon “bootprint.” We must reduce atmospheric carbon in half by 2030. At the same time, we can  work on global peacebuilding by challenging US militarism, targeting divestment from fossil fuels and the military-industrial corporations, working to end the nuclear era, and fostering development of a peace culture based on solving conflicts and war through peace processes with all parties at the peace table.