Giulia Rozzi
December 6, 2008 | 5:49 pm EST
This is old news - certainly older than Jon telling you earlier this month about the Army going green - but the United States Military is the number one purchaser and user of oil in the world. The. Whole. Wide. World.
In fact, NPR told us last year (I told you it was old) that based on the military’s 340,000 barrels of oil it goes through a day,
If the Defense Department were a country, it would rank about 38th in the world for oil consumption, right behind the Philippines.
Let’s do the math, roughly. When oil was at the peak prices of about $150 a barrel…multiply that by 340,000 a day…that is (get ready for it) $18,615,000,000 a year on oil. Now that oil is back down to about $50 a barrel, though, it’s only…let’s see…$6,205,000,000. Six billion dollars a year on gas, alone, for the United States Military. To put that into perspective, with that much money, I could buy enough copies of Michael Jackson’s Thriller to listen to each copy just once, back to back, every minute of every day, for the next 43,586 years.
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Want to support your troops this season? Check out Trees for Troops, a program of the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation and FedEx Corp., that will deliver 16,000 Real Christmas Trees to military service members and their families throughout the United States and overseas.
takepart and visit http://www.treesfortroops.org/ to learn more and donate.
When one thinks of institutions on the cutting edge of the environmental movement, the US Military isn’t usually the first to come to mind. But all that might be about to change with the United State Army having released its first ever sustainability report.
The study, which was recently reported on in The New York Times’ Green Inc. blog, shows an organization with a ways to go in lessening its carbon footprint, or “bootprint” as they call it in military parlance. For instance at present only 16 out of 155 Army installations have comprehensive sustainability plans in place. However a more formidable 78 out of 301 new Army building constructions met with LEED standards. Considering the vast sums of money spent on the United States military and the fact that it will soon be serving under the leadership of the new Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama, the Armed Services seem like a perfect place to implement institution wide environmental policies that will make a serious impact both in the United States and around the world. The sustainability report is an important first step in realizing such goals.
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As Thanksgiving approaches many of us are preparing for the circus of a big family dinner, but unfortunately people serving in the U.S. military overseas can’t join in the festivities back home. So Xerox has launched the Let’s Say Thanks program, giving you the opportunity to let them know we support and appreciate their service to the country. All you have to do is choose a postcard designed by children from all over the country, write a personal message and hit send. The holidays are a particularly difficult time to be away from the ones you love, so let the troops know that we’re thinking of them and hoping that they can come home soon.
takepart by sending a special message to the troops:
The ‘don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was instituted in 1993, stopping the military from asking potential members if they are gay. However the policy requires openly gay service members to be discharged from service. Now, according to the lead sponsor of a bill that would repeal the law, the “don’t ask-don’t tell” policy could be overturned when Barack Obama’s administration takes over the White House.
Obama told Philadelphia Gay News “Although I have consistently said I would repeal ‘don’t ask-don’t tell,’ I believe that the way to do it is to make sure that we are working through processes, getting the Joint Chiefs of Staff clear in terms of what our priorities are going to be.”-CNN.com
A Washington Post/ABC News poll this summer found 75 percent of Americans support allowing gays to serve openly, compared to only 45 percent in 1993.
So basically what we’re saying is-it’s cool for gays to fight and possibly die for America’s freedom BUT it’s not cool for gays in America to have the freedom to marry. Oh okay. gothca.
takepart and visit the Human Rights Campaign at http://www.hrc.org/ to join the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.
Babies, kids and veterans are coddled, kissed, saluted and spoken about with more upbeat language than any other demographic during a political election. Criticizing veterans would be political suicide for any candidate. So, it’s easy for Mr. So-Called-Maverick John McCain to claim that as a veteran, his support is unwavering. However, those are merely words and although John McCain fancies himself as the Straight-talk-Express, he is a politician. So, can you believe him? I’d argue NO. His actions do not back up his rhetoric. How do I know this? Because the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (a non-partisan non-profit organization dedicated to helping returning vets which led the fight for the successful passage of the new GI bill) issued their 2008 Congressional report card which rates all members on veterans affairs. John McCain received a D from IAVA. Yes, he has failed our veterans.
takepart Check out the report card and hold your senators and representatives accountable to supporting veterans’ benefits and rights.
It takes a lot of fossil fuels to fight a war for oil, so it’s no wonder the Defense Department is working on innovative ways to curb its carbon bootprint. From the AP:
The water bottles, plastic foam plates and other trash discarded by American troops in Iraq’s mess halls may soon be serving double-duty — as an unlikely power source to illuminate barracks and power up laptops.
The Army is preparing to deploy to Iraq two 4-ton biomass refineries designed to turn piles of trash into electricity. Each can run for 20 hours on a ton of trash, producing enough power to light a small village.
The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is now here to give you the very best of Katie, Nicole, Giulia, Gina and Kerry! If you worry about missing your favorite bloggers’ posts as they push their way down the page each and every week - Never Fear! Check out our most popular posts of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites.
Katie:
Woody Guthrie: This Grammy Is Your Grammy / This Grammy Is My Grammy
Rambo Fights for Burma’s Freedom + 5 Steps You Can Take To Help Burma In 5 Minutes
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Nicole:
“Yes We Can” Obama Music Video a Unique Celebrity Endorsement
Top 10 US Grant, Scholarship and Fellowship Awarding Foundations
Ba-Da-Bling Commercials Pulled in New York
“Safe Sex or No Sex” Shirts Get Teens Suspended
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Gina:
10 Internet Videos Featuring Celebrities Advocating For A Cause
Close Up: An Introduction to Iranian Cinema and Cinematic Rainbows
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Kerry:
Sheryl Crow’s Apocalyptic Peak-Oil Song
Solar Powered Soldiers Wear Uniforms with Built-In Batteries
The average U.S. soldier needs 88 AA batteries for a five-day mission. That’s a lot of weight to haul around, but a new high-tech fabric that incorporates solar powered batteries into cloth could go a long way towards lightening that load, according to NPR’s Living On Earth:
“these threads are a fraction the thickness of a human hair. When they’re made out of battery electrodes and photovoltaic and fuel cells and then stitched together, they constitute a fabric that captures and stores energy while it’s worn.
Florida researchers designed the machine for the military, but as Living On Earth’s Mitra Taj noted:
The new technology might help in civilian life too, boosting efforts to make environmentally friendly power sources that multitask–imagine a jacket that keeps you warm while charging your cell phone.
Nice to see the military-industrial complex, which once brought us Agent Orange, being an agent of green.
Find out more about solar power’s potential at solarpower.org. 
At the end of September 2007, almost 200,000 contractor personnel were working in Iraq and Afghanistan, exceeding the number of US military personally in the two countries. Jeff Bell, deputy undersecretary of defense, told Congress yesterday the administration is “not adequately prepared to address this unprecedented scale of our dependence on contractors.” Bell also discussed contractors’ “critical involvement in the American war effort,” and said they had become “part of the total force” of the Department of Defense.
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by learning more about corporate accountability in Iraq and Afghanistan on Amnesty International’s website. You can also by emailing Blackwater to tell them to take human rights seriously, and to comply with Iraqi and US investigations into the company.
Giulia:
