The way to seriously start mitigating climate change is to stop doing this:

Smoke fills the sky as residents watch burning fuel tankers along the GT road in Nowshera, located in Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province early morning October 7, 2010. Gunmen in Pakistan set fire to up to 40 supply trucks for NATO troops in Afghanistan on Wednesday, police said.

We need to end the incredible environmental damage of war. Can any serious progress be made on climate change without ending our wars?

Soon there will be another UNFCCC climate conference, this year in Cancun. But despite events like Bill McKibben’s 10-10-10 “global work parties“, serious action on stopping greenhouse gas emissions remains elusive. And environmentalists have to contend not only with pushback from politicians and climate change deniers, but the U.S. military.  Wars and militaries do so much environmental damage every year that an individual’s contributions to climate change pales in comparison. That makes events like 10-10-10 very anemic.  It’s not individuals doing most of the greenhouse gas emissions and it’s not individuals who can stop climate change — it’s businesses and governments. Until the military’s  pollution and contributions to climate change end, our efforts remain negated.  Not entirely, but blaming the individual for climate change, as the video talked about here does,  is nonsense.  We can’t even keep up with the climate change and environmental damage the military does.

“The military is now using more and more of the high-powered and highly toxic JP-8 jet fuel for many of its vehicles. Along with emitting CO2, jet planes pump out a trail of nitrous oxide and sulfur and water particles, which, according to some toxicologists, may be three times more harmful to the atmosphere than CO2 alone.” — Barry Sanders

Remember the horrible video below? It’s based on the idea that individuals are to blame for climate change, and therefore should be the ones to solve the problem, which is exactly the wrong approach. As one writer put it in critiquing the message of the video:

The new promotional video for 10:10,. . . . has generated a fair amount of online reaction and discussion in the last day or two. It is perhaps the worst campaign video I’ve ever seen.

There is no indication that we may, in our millions, need to pressure the rich and powerful – and our elected representatives who tend to buckle to their interests – to deliver serious social and political action to avert environmental catastrophe. . . . . . It is deeply snobbish and reinforces the mistaken idea that the elite is already ‘on board’ with tackling climate change, but now ordinary people need to be similarly convinced.

Not only does it turn climate change into an individual responsibility issue, it reduces it to being simply about awareness. If only people understand the need to reduce their carbon footprint they will do so – and if they don’t then they are backward, irrational, selfish. . . . [...]