The Military-Climate Complex

For such a serious issue as climate change, our international system, our economic mores, and societal fortitude have been woeful in finding solutions that would actually do something substantive to reverse our planet’s climate course.

With the conclusion of the Copenhagen Climate Talks, we are once again left with acknowledgement that there is a problem but once again left with unwillingness to commit to fixing the problem.  We could buy all the Toyota Priuses here in America, but as long as China builds two coal-buring plants a week, (an economic necessity to lift their millions out of desperate poverty and a necessity to keep the CCP in power) well, we’re all doomed anyway.

Having concluded the Copenhagen talks, it should be painfully obvious that our world leaders basically put all their stock in a silver bullet technological innovation that will solve all of our climate problems.  Every economic and political force imaginable stands in the way of the holistic approach to carbon reduction, which means the green market these days is really limited to the marketing industry rather than the energy industry.  I call it the “fake green market.”  Beyond Petroleum is a great example of the fake green market.  The truth is, our economic regimes of economies of scale and marginal efficiency will always prevent the substantive transition to forms of energy other than the most cost-effective ones, namely coal and oil.  Despite all the spending in the fake green market, our planet’s carbon emissions are rising, not declining.

So I was struck by an article in the Economist this week about the US military trying to find ways to reduce its dependency on foreign sources of energy.

During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, America’s marines often found themselves outrunning their fuel supplies. “Unleash us from the tether of fuel,” their then commander in Iraq, General James Mattis, later pleaded. As insurgency engulfed the Americans, supply convoys became a favourite target. In July 2006 General Richard Zilmer, the marine general then in charge of American forces in western Iraq, sent out an urgent request for solar panels, wind turbines and other devices to reduce the need for liquid fuels. His troops were being placed “in harm’s way each time we send out a convoy”, he said; protecting supply convoys was drawing forces away from other tasks. And in 2008 the spike in oil prices played havoc with military budgets: the Pentagon’s fuel bill rose from $13 billion in 2007 to about $20 billion.

The article then mentioned several ways that the US military had significantly reduced fossil fuel consumption.  A few notables included a smart grid system that is being tested on Fort Irwin, CA; a food waste to energy converter in Baghdad; use of biofuels on F/A-18s; and biofuels on submarines.

This got me thinking that the whole military-industrial complex—the one I have decried over the years—might be the very thing we need to overcome the economic obstacles to green innovation that are so prevalent in the normal economy.  The advantages of this configuration to the private economy include the following at a minimum:

• military contractors do not sell products to the public at large; they sell products to the US government
• the US government does not operate with the profit motive
• military contractors can allay the tremendous up front capital requirements necessary for the transitional alternative sources of energy
• military contractors have a willing buyer and one that will pay more than would the private citizen
• the US government’s vital interests unquestionably include finding clean sources of energy, not the least of which include their vulnerability to nations that pit themselves as the enemies of our armed forces

A quick survey of history will show that many innovations we take advantage of originated from the military-industrial complex.  One that had no small impact on our world was the internet.  But also, our mass production of rubber and anesthesia, our microwaves, our cell-phone towers, and even our computers would arguably not be here were it not for a war-time necessity that subsequently found its place in the civilian sector.

So here is my proposition: If we are in fact able to withdraw from Afghanistan in the time that Obama has indicated and then able to significantly reduce our combat budget, Congress should appropriate a substantial amount of the subsequent military budget to the development of green technology for our armed forces.  Billion-dollar contracts would be given to the companies that produce innovations that reduce the use of fossil fuels the most and which cost the least.  Overnight, military contractors would be given every incentive in the world to invest billions of dollars in real green technology.  The hope is that the military market would become the springboard for viability in the civilian market.

As it stands, I have no confidence in the private sector, the international system, or in individuals to solve our climate problems.  What we need is a seller that could invest untold billions of dollars on research and production with the assurance of profitability from a buyer that could spend untold billions of dollars on products.  I believe the military-industrial complex to be just that.  And once green tech becomes viable in our country, our products could be sold to the whole world, not the least of which being India and China.