If there’s one
aspect of human activity which I’d never describe as being in any way
environmentally sound, it has to be warfare.
Using the earth’s resources to build weapons to kill, maim, and destroy
is never going to be on anyone’s top ten list of sustainable activities. So I was fascinated to read at the weekend
that the army is ‘going green’.
It seems that they’re
planning to install solar panels and wind turbines at bases in Afghanistan, and have been testing such an
installation in Cyprus. The plan is to deploy the new equipment later
this year, and that it will slash fuel consumption by 45%.
However, lest
anyone should think that the army is going soft, a member of the test team made
it clear that this plan was all about saving lives, and had nothing to do with “tree
hugging”. The problem to which this is a
response is really nothing to do with the environment at all – it’s just that
the efforts to pacify that country have been so unsuccessful that fuel convoys
are being regularly attacked by the Taliban.
The equation is a simple one: fewer convoys = fewer attacks = fewer
deaths.
Now of course we
should commend the army for reducing fuel usage, and for doing anything and
everything it can to cut the loss of life in Afghanistan. But we should not pretend that it has
anything to do with environmentalism. The
only ‘green’ warfare is no warfare.
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