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                                                                             STOP CLIMATE CHANGE

 

 

Climate change is bringing our planet to the edge of ecological catastrophe.  The ongoing drive of powerful transnational corporations to maximise their profits by pillaging the earth’s natural resources cannot be allowed to continue.

 

Environmental destruction and militarism are tightly intertwined. Wars cause tremendous harm to those attacked.  The United States used depleted uranium in its invasion of Iraq. The resulting radiation will endanger those exposed to it for millennia. U. S. plans sprayed Vietnam with tons of dioxin (Agent Orange) and napalm and the impact on children born with birth defects continues to this day.

 

Military expenditures also absorb a huge proportion of economic output. Renewing the Trident missile system and then operating it for the following decades will cost the UK upwards more than four hundred billion pounds. The United States spends more than seven hundred billion dollars every year on the military. Too many of the most talented scientists and engineers spend their careers developing new methods of killing people, rather than inventing new methods of countering climate change or curing diseases.

 

Yet these are just the most obvious interconnections between climate change and militarism. All too often, wars are caused by the desire of powerful corporations to control key natural resources such as oil and gas reserves. Military force is used to secure and defend that control. A struggle to counter corporate control will of necessity link anti-war activists with climate change militants.

 

Climate change is already causing disastrous reductions in the production of food in some of the poorest countries in the world. As a result, many people are forced to flee their home countries and seek refuge elsewhere.

 

Finally, the focus on short-run gains rather than long-run sustainable solutions underlies both militarism and environmental destruction. The corporate drive for quick profits is a primary cause of both wars and climate change. 

 

We need to unify the anti-war movement and the environmental movement, the young and the old, in a common struggle for a new society.

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                                                                                 RESIST MILITARISM

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