Yesterday we took a look at a batch of new electric cars members of the Army, Air Force, and Navy will soon find ferrying them around bases. Environmental magazine Plenty recently gave a quick rundown on the good and the bad of military policies as they pertain to the environment. As one might expect, the piece notes the further away a particular environmental initiative is to accomplishing a tactical mission, the less the military is probably interested in it. Still, it looks like there are some good things (and not so good) going on according to Plenty [excerpts]:
The good
* At North Carolina's Fort Bragg,
troops train in mock villages built from recycled shipping containers.
The container construction cuts waste and energy use, while reducing
the price tag from $400,000 per village to just $25,000.
* At
forward operating bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, 85 percent of energy
goes to power AC units that keep troops and equipment cool. Spraying
foam insulation directly onto tents has cut energy losses by 45
percent, reducing the amount of diesel trucked to the front line and
decreasing convoys’ exposure to attacks.
The bad
* The armed forces rely heavily on domestic fuel, using 1.5 percent of America’s oil. That’s spurred investment in coal-to-liquid
technologies, which release huge quantities of greenhouse gases, and
the Department of Defense wants to start drilling for oil on military
bases.
* Forget hybrid Humvees. Efforts to build battery-powered tactical vehicles have fallen flat — the military will be using conventional gas-guzzlers for the foreseeable future.
The ugly
*
The Pentagon claims that depleted uranium munitions, widely used by US
troops in Iraq, are harmless. Scientists aren’t so sure: The Royal
Society, Britain’s national academy of science, says the radioactive metal can poison soil and water, and raises risks of kidney damage and lung cancer.
*
Under the Bush Administration, the military won exemptions from
environmental regulations protecting endangered species, migratory
birds, and marine mammals. Now the DoD hopes to sidestep rules
governing Superfund
sites and air pollution, skipping costly clean-ups on 129
heavily-polluted sites and redefining “hazardous materials” to exclude
unexploded munitions.
