 |
| Beating ploughshares into swords — we’ve come full circle and reversed. |
The military machine is a major polluter – why is the West turning to war and away from public need?
First published at Substack, 3 August 2026
In the year of wildfire Europe, in the months of UK drought lamentations and parallel press cheers for intensifying conflict in Europe, may I reiterate that the military is one of the biggest polluters on the planet. Bigger than farting cows, bigger than the school run, bigger than your annual holiday flight.
RESEARCH SHOWS:
- The US military is one of the largest polluters globally, managing approximately 39,000 contaminated sites.
- It produces more toxins than the combined output of the top five US chemical companies.
- Military activities are responsible for significant emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.
- The main sources of military pollution and emissions include fuel consumption for military operations, equipment procurement, and the logistics of supply chains. Additionally, military activities contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 5.5% of global emissions.
Washington fiddles while climate change burns the world
How much did blowing up the Nordstream pipelines add to the carbon emissions tally? According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), an estimated 15 million tons of CO2 equivalent in greenhouse gas emissions, primarily due to the release of over 485,000 tons of methane. This amount of methane contributed to global warming comparable to the emissions from approximately 8 million cars driven for a year.
Wildfires are breaking out all over Europe. Huge swathes of France and Spain are being fried to a crisp. The UK is a tinderbox with some areas receiving only one percent of normal July rainfall. And a huge El Nino is gathering strength in the Pacific which will have devastating global consequences. But let’s not allow potential end of the world scenarios to dampen our testosterony predilections. All efforts are STILL set to turbo-charge the proxy war on Russia in Ukraine.
Not only does the conflict add massively to global warming and climate change, it is ratcheting up to a direct clash with the world’s biggest nuclear power having pushed NATO right up to its doorstep. And that’s on top of the unhinged, unprovoked, illegal war on Iran and all the other arsonist’s points of ignition around the world as American imperialism goes for broke.
Trump even blurted the quiet part out loud that Ukraine is rich in resources and ripe for plunder. “Could be worth $300 million. Could be more. Could be billions. We can take practically anything we want.” Just as they’ve done with Venezuela, and just as they intend for Russia and China.
Charge of the Light Brigade redux
Fat chance or not, the fallout from their attempts will be painful. Former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg admitted that the war in Ukraine started in 2014, not 2022. (Yes, it has deeper roots going back further but that’s when the Obama administration made the big leap towards the proxy war on Russia with the Maidan coup.) But Europe insists on pursuing the race to war with Russia, with China targeted as a close second.
Where’s the diplomacy? Where’s the public debate?
We remember the war in Ukraine could have been over within the month until Boris Johnson crashed the imminent peace deal in March 2022. Thanks to him, it’s dragged on longer than World War II and threatens WWIII as Zelensky attempts to merge the Ukraine and Iran wars into one big mega ruck, drawing America back in to Europe. Was Johnson really Biden’s messenger boy? Or had the British deep state awoken to the opportunity to reenact The Charge of the Light Brigade into the valley of death and the land of Babi Yar?
Climate change be damned, let loose the hogs of war
One way or another, whether from climate change catastrophe or apocalyptic world war, Western elites seem intent on burning down the world as they lose their hegemony. In a colossal act of cutting off its nose to spite its face, Chancellor Mertz has led Germany’s deindustrialisation with the loss of the cheap Russian energy that once fuelled the biggest economy in the EU. Washington chooses high food and gas prices for its people. The UK strains at the leash to follow suit. How are world leaders getting away with this national self-harm?
Someone posted the Hermann Goering quote:
“Naturally the common people don’t want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
Climate change is the price we can’t afford to pay
So there it is. We have always been at war with Eastasia. Orwell’s 1984 is proving to be something of an instruction manual. Two-minute hate? Tick. Emmanuel Goldstein hate figure? Tick.
Andy Burnham lays out his intentions by appointing war fetishist John Healey to the role of Chancellor, and that other charmer, Wes Streeting to Defence, sewing up the interests of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Along with a government cabinet rammed with “Labour Friends of Israel”, I’d venture this is a pretty accurate indication of direction of travel. Politicians involved in such matters should show us their share portfolios and be banned from the MIC revolving door when they leave office.
Calls for cuts to be made to the UK’s welfare state to fund warfare are being made. John Healey’s role heading up the Treasury cements that. Expect a rising wave of media shills herding us, the surplus labour, into the plutocratic elite’s cattle-pens.
Death Star Britain transforms into war machine
I’ve long made the case that Britain is turning into a Death Star. This is the logical outcome of a system rolling over and morphing into its essence which no longer relies on labour, much of which is now surplus to requirements. Devoid of imagination and common humanity, politicians John Swinney, John Healey and George Roberston are making the running on behalf of the MIC. Hermann Goering’s strategy is now openly in play: All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
Only a few days ago, Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney tested the waters by lifting the ban on public money going to weapons manufacturers, sweetening the turn to war with a pause (not a halt) in arming Israel. UK Defence Secretary John Healey has long been stirring up enmity and fear between us and Russia, and threatening to go to war with China over Taiwan. Yesterday, George Robertson, former defence secretary and Blairite NATO chief during the Iraq War, told the nation that we were in deadly “peril” and his mates in NATO and the MIC need more money. Lots of it. Our public money.
Keir Starmer has handed over billions to the Ukraine war and promised more without end. We’re raising our NATO payments from 2.7 percent to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035. And he’s pledged Britain will actually raise defence funding to 5 percent, almost double what we’re paying now.
How much global warming is that?
From post-war liberal order to technocratic feudalism
So, here I am looking out over a parched UK landscape, the prospect of AI centres purloining our remaining drinking water and a nation descending into poverty and danger under the new technocratic feudalism. Our politicians willingly gave up the advances we made under a flawed post-war liberal order without any fight in a giant game of Risk. Socialism would have moved society forward but now it’s all been clawed back by robber baron elites.
As Joey 周乙 says, “‘It’s capitalism in crisis choosing to destroy ‘excess capacity’ through war rather than share prosperity”.
Washington’s favourite academic, Niall Ferguson, laid it out for the public in 2011 and 2012 shortly after Barack Obama made his Pivot to Asia. Essentially, shatter wealthy, stable Europe for pillage, power and the removal of a rival bloc. I flagged it up at the time:
https://www.annachen.co.uk/china/shakedown/niall-ferguson-tv-review/
None of this mayhem was either necessary or for our benefit. By 2018, the nations of the Eurasian landmass were emerging from America’s 2008 financial meltdown in sync, floated out of trouble by China’s huge economic and productive heft acting as a shock absorber. The future looked bright. Cheap Russian energy and peaceful trade with China ensured affordability for the masses: the twin engines of our stabilising economy on the Eurasia landmass, for the global south and for America.
Western commentators were rejoicing that China had saved American capitalism from itself. A massive drive to coordinate combating climate change was planned with Joe Biden promising to work with the rising superpower. That is, until he performed a pivot, not unlike his old boss, and decided that clobbering China was more important.
We could have stuck to ploughshares instead of swords in a peaceful and prosperous world. But, thanks to the elites, the only bright future we’re likely to see is the red glow of advancing flames and the flash of their nuclear toys.
It’s Empire reviving itself in its true form, like the Terminator’s endoskeleton emerging from the flames stripped of all human features. A cold killer machine, run by Cyberdyne Systems and the techbro billionaire class out of Palo Alto and the White House.
 |
| YOUTUBE VIDEO: Anna Chen on America's transformation into the Death Star, 21 February 2026 |
See also this unique live timeline as it happened. Contemporaneous print and broadcast threaded on a historical through-line: Shakedown Timeline of America’s 21st Century War on China, page 4 (current, latest first): 2024 to the Present — President Donald Trump’s second term turmoil: https://www.annachen.co.uk/china/shakedown/
Shakedown Timeline, page 1: 1997-2010 — Hong Kong handover & WTO to President Obama’s Pivot to Asia:https://www.annachen.co.uk/china/shakedown/
Shakedown Timeline, page 2: 2010-2010 — Obama’s Pivot-to-Asia to Trump’s first presidency:https://www.annachen.co.uk/china/shakedown/shakedown-timeline-page-2/
Shakedown Timeline, page 3: 2019-2024: Joe Biden’s presidency, Covid and Ukraine to the rise of BRICS and Donald Trump’s second term: https://www.annachen.co.uk/china/shakedown/shakedown-timeline-of-americas-21stc-war-on-china-3/
Donald Trump always wanted to play with the toys. 2018, I was early but the principle remains the same — none of us is getting out of here alive if Trump continues to be enabled by his feral support system: https://www.annachen.co.uk/2018/12/24/happy-new-year-will-donald-trumps-tiny-hand-press-the-big-red-button-in-2019/
No comments:
Post a Comment