Antiwar and progressive veterans are marking EarthDay by highlighting the ways in which militarism fuels the global climate emergency.
Antiwar and progressive veterans organizations across the country are marking the first Earth Day after the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan and Russia’s subsequent invasion of Ukraine by highlighting the ways in which militarism fuels the global climate emergency, and how the planetary crisis, in turn, impacts service members., they say, is bad for the planet.
in the nation, climate justice organizers with the progressive veterans group Common Defense have been meeting with Sen. Joe Manchin and his staff to encourage him to support legislation that would invest in green jobs for low-income West Virginian veterans. Lloyd, who lives in Charleston, West Virginia, and served as a military police officer and Army specialist from 2001 to 2010, said she knows firsthand how difficult it is for veterans in West Virginia to transition out of the armed services and into the U.S. workforce: After she was discharged, she and her two children had to move in with her mother because she was unable to find work that would allow her to support her family while paying rent and utilities.
“Historically here in the state, you only had two choices: It was either going to the mines, or go into the military if you wanted a decent living,” she tells. Sometimes it was both: When her own grandfather came home from World War II, he went to work in a West Virginia coal mine, she says.warning that global greenhouse gas emissions need to peak by 2025 to keep planetary warming to the Paris Agreement limit of 1.