We rise together for climate, jobs, justice and peace - If you agree, sign-on!
Labor, environmental, peace and other progressive social justice movements
Peace is a climate goal because it is a climate necessity
War is an environmental nightmare that pollutes and contaminates every place it is fought, while contributing substantially to the carbon load of the planet as a whole. Its physical, social and financial impacts are felt for generations. It drains resources from investments in clean energy and energy infrastructure, protecting the most threatened areas, mitigating the worst effects of climate change, and meeting the other critical economic and social needs of peoples and nations.
The US military is the single largest consumer of fossil fuels on the planet and its single largest greenhouse gas polluter. The US military has been continuously at war for more than 17 years at a cost of over five trillion dollars. It has more than 800 foreign bases in 80 nations, and has deployed US forces to 150 countries – more than three-quarters of all the nations in the world. Our country spends more on its military than the next seven nations combined - roughly double China, Russia, Iran and North Korea together.*
Our nation’s foreign policy serves the interests of the military-industrial complex and fossil fuel corporations. The Pentagon consumes more than two-thirds of our discretionary budget. It has as its primary strategic objective protecting the interests of multinational energy conglomerates, securing access to and control of global energy resources and markets, and asserting US military preeminence against any real, potential or imagined challenger.
The US military is the enforcement arm of the fossil fuel corporations. The result is what the AFL-CIO General Executive Council described as our nation’s “militarized foreign policy.” Such military overreach is not required to make us secure. It exists to secure the profits of oil and gas corporations and the military-industrial complex. Indeed, playing global overlord makes the US more hated and less secure.
A just transition to a fossil fuel free future requires that we abandon war and military hegemony as our government’s preferred foreign policy posture and national security objective. A just transition to a 100% sustainable energy economy must end our reliance on fossil fuels but must also abandon our militarized foreign policy, protect and meet the needs of frontline and other heavily impacted communities, assure the welfare of workers in both carbon fuel-dependent and military-industrial jobs, and support military personnel impacted by an end to our militarized foreign policy.
Environmental, social justice, labor and peace causes are thus interwoven and interdependent, just as the fossil fuel and military-industrial interests are interwoven and interdependent. We cannot achieve the objectives of one without achieving the objectives of the others.
That is why we rise together for climate, jobs,
environmental, economic and social justice,
and peace.
###
Sponsored by
To:
Labor, environmental, peace and other progressive social justice movements
From:
[Your Name]
We will never achieve a fossil fuel-free sustainable economy or establish a truly just and tolerant society so long as the Fossil Fuel Industrial Complex (FFIC) and Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) retain their grip on our economy, government, federal budget and foreign policy. We can’t beat one without taking on the other. We call on our unions, other labor organizations and the movements for climate, social and economic justice and peace to recognize our struggles are also interdependent. Success for any of us requires far greater coordination, collaboration and mutual solidarity from all of us. We must rise together for climate, jobs, justice and peace.