March 2007 | From the Editor
A More Sustainable Army?
Sometime in early February I received an email from a Major John J. Fittipaldi, a fellow at the Army Environmental Policy Institute. He complimented Conscious Choice on our “Chicago Green Report Card” (Jan ’07) and requested information about Chicago’s sustainability-practices, and the grading system we employed in the report card. It was a long email that literally had come up the chain of command from various Army officers to the one who finally reached me.
I read the entire discussion thread, and while the interest and questions were perfectly logical, not to mention flattering, and their approach more than polite, what struck me most was this one particular phrase within Major Fittipaldi’s greeting: “Your article has generated some interest within our colleagues engaged in building a more sustainabile [sic] Army.”
Although I was unsure how to respond, much less how I felt about the Army reading Conscious Choice, I couldn’t get past that line. Building a more sustainable Army? Did I want to help the Army become “more sustainable?” And what exactly did that mean?
I have to admit I found the statement absurd on its premise, a humorous oxymoron along the lines of “military intelligence.” I thought long and hard about the idea of the Army, (let’s be honest) the world’s largest, most resource-consuming, most polluting, and most feared killing machine, becoming “more sustainable,” and I was immediately filled with a terribly sad sense of panic. Sad because the green movement was born out of an inviolable love and dedication to life on the planet, something antithetical to 10,000 nuclear weapons; Panic because it was being co-opted by those who do not share our values of peaceful resolution of conflict. I had no delusions about the killing capability of a solar-powered tank.
My response was polite and gracious, perhaps a tad snarky, but ultimately non-cooperative. How could I offer sustainability tips to the Armed Forces without mentioning that they are the world’s largest single consumer of fossil fuels, and an occupying power that uses 65 percent of every tax dollar collected. If they truly wanted to sustain themselves, they’d get out of the Middle East and everywhere else they are fighting other people’s (or corporation’s) wars.
I copied a few hundred people on my reply, and the responses ran the gamut from applause to condemnation. I was chided by one for “passing up a golden opportunity to dialogue” and told by another that my response was “a gross abuse of power.” The scariest reply came from people who said, “Well, they aren’t going anywhere, so you might as well give them what they want.” It signified total resignation.
Wasn’t it Gandhi who said we don’t have to fight to resist? If we don’t choose to stand by our convictions and beliefs when the opportunity presents itself, then who are we, really?
— Charles Shaw
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