The Secure and the Dispossessed

The Secure, the Dispossessed, and the Mentally Deranged Dotards

By David Swanson

In The Secure and the Dispossessed, Nick Buxton and Ben Hayes have collected an unflinching survey of a species gone mad. The book’s subtitle is “How the Military and Corporations Are Shaping a Climate-Changed World.” In short, the Authoritarian Exceptionalist Military Corporate Complex is flamboyantly recognizing the hole it is in, and exponentially increasing the rate of digging, while hiring PR firms to redefine “digging” as “robust engagement in advanced resilient green initiatives that save us all by further enriching the rich, militarizing the world, and rendering the earth uninhabitable.”

The contributors to this book confront the idea that surviving in a further climate changed world is unrelated to surviving in the world we have right now. Avoiding the need to reform the most destructive practices now engaged in, they suggest, is not the surest path to useful future innovations. In fact, it exacerbates future crises. Out-of-control corporate crony capitalism and militarism are problems that must be addressed now and ever more so as the natural environment collapses. War and disaster capitalism are not produced by environmental or economic or refugee crises, quite the reverse. Climate crisis could produce greater social unity and sustainable practices if those are what we choose to respond with.

Corporate and military greenwashing should be power washed with facts. Wal-Mart’s renewable energy goal is set to be actually reached in about 300 years. The U.S. military’s supposed greening consists mostly of token moves toward non-green nuclear energy and bio-fuel “alternatives” dwarfed by such leading threats as a massive new investment in nuclear weaponry. Exxon Mobil now possesses more oil that the human-friendly climate can survive, and Exxon Mobil is focused on finding more. The proxy wars of the previous cold war ravaged social cohesion while killing 20 million, injuring 60 millions, and making 15 million people homeless. Rex Tillerson, one of the supposed “adults” keeping Trump under control, has said that climate crises for agriculture are no problem at all, as people can simply change the locations of the farming of various crops. Scientists do not agree with him. Following the BP oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, insurance companies have been offering reputational-risk insurance, meaning the provision of public relations services to sell a false but preferable image of a corporation following its creation of a widely known catastrophe.

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Why do we not hear these pressing arguments everywhere? Here’s part of the answer. The Nature Conservancy lists the U.S. military as a “Partner in Conservation.” The National Resources Defense Council “partners” with the military. Conservation International helps weapons dealers greenwash, and was exposed by journalists posing as representatives of Lockheed Martin who asked purely for dishonest cover of destructive practices. The Sierra Club dropped out of a coalition effort I was part of when it found out that an organization involved in the coalition opposed drone murders. When I invited representatives of environmental organizations to take part in a conference last month on war and the environment, Greenpeace gave me a completely nonsensical refusal, while 350.org reluctantly signed on, then dropped out, then agreed to come, then called in sick.

The rest of the article is here.

If US American environmentalist were serious about saving the environment, they would be working to stop the US military and all the wars we are engaged in, and then reduce the military funding to about 10% of it's current level and spend that on saving the environment.