Militaries Are among the World’s Biggest Emitters. This General Wants Them to Go Green.

by Michael Birnbaum (Washington Post) ... One recommendation is to fly military aircraft on 50 percent sustainable aviation fuel. Another is to increase the use of fuel-efficient hybrid electric armored vehicles — like Priuses, but for armored personnel carriers.

Perhaps most ominously, it lists the many ways global warming will destabilize nations and alliances across the world. Oil-rich nations such as Saudi Arabia will be upended if they have no takers for their main product and they become less strategically important. Access to the rare earth elements needed for batteries and circuitry could lead to clashes between China and the United States in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Greenland. Countries where water shortages are likely — such as Iraq and Somalia — will probably face even more conflicts.

“We have a strong obligation to make sure that our forces deliver a sustainable deployment and indeed make sure they move from traditional energies and fuel requirements to more modern requirements,” said (Ben) Wallace, the British defense secretary. “But also we will have to deal with the consequences of a failed climate change policy, if that happens. We have to deal with the consequences of migrant flows, of breaking down of communities, of fights over rare resources, border frictions which will increase as climate change increases.”

The global efforts typically focus on two entangled issues: how to reduce the emissions of the national security establishment, and how to get ready for a world that will be more dangerous and unpredictable as the mercury creeps up in everyone’s thermometers.

Diesel fuel is the key to much of modern war-fighting: It goes in Humvees and armored personnel carriers, and it gives remote outposts their electricity and communications when it is burned in generators.

But carrying the fuel to the places it needed to go was a perilous endeavor. Fuel tankers are hulking, slow-moving targets. They were sitting ducks, needing protection from vehicles on the ground and from helicopters in the air as they winded their precious cargo down contested mountain highways. The highest-ranking British officer killed in Afghanistan died in a roadside bomb attack on a resupply convoy. A U.S. Army study found that in 2007, there was one casualty for every 24 fuel convoys in Afghanistan.

So any effort to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels during deployments, whether by improving the fuel efficiency of tanks and transporters or through powering posts with solar power, can actually make soldiers better at their core job: fighting wars.

Part of the challenge has been generational, he (Richard Nugee) said: The older ribbon-bedecked officers at the top of the military chain of command weren’t paying enough attention to environmental issues. That stifled younger officers who might be more green-focused. READ MORE