Weaponizing nature: The geopolitical ecology of the US Navy’s biofuel program

Abstract

The United States military is treating climate change as a crucial factor in its preparation for future conflicts. This concern manifests not only in strategic planning and forward-looking documents, but also in building infrastructural capacity and material provision. Yet, the impetus to 'green' the military goes beyond the deployment of existing technologies. We examine several facets of the military's role as an environmental actor, particularly through its promotion of the US Navy's 'Great Green Fleet' (GGF), which actively supports the development of advanced biofuels by subsidizing their development and facilitating wider marketization. The GGF promises to reduce military reliance on conventional fossil fuels and reconfigure its energy sourcing, thus reducing dependence on imported hydrocarbons; this is with an eye towards ultimately severing the logistical relationship between existing energy infrastructures and the spaces of military intervention. Taking an integrated lens of political ecology and geopolitics -'geopolitical ecology' -we seek to provide an understanding of the production of weaponized nature. We demonstrate that the US military's discursive use of climate change to justify the THIS IS A PRE-COPY EDITED DRAFT OF ACCEPTED ARTICLE IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 2017 2 provision of new military hardware and advanced biofuels promotes a vision of resource conflicts to support the development of technologies to overcome the constraints to delivery of fuel to emergent front lines. We argue that while this may appear to be militarized greenwashing, it signals a shift in the logics and practices of fuel sourcing driven by a dystopian vision of climate change, which the US military played a significant role in creating.'The impacts of climate change may increase the frequency, scale, and complexity of future missions, including defense support to civil authorities, while at the same time undermining the capacity of our domestic installations to support training activities. Our actions to increase … renewable energy sources will increase the resiliency of our installations and help mitigate their effects.'

Hidden carbon costs of the “everywhere war”: Logistics, geopolitical ecology, and the carbon boot‐print of the US military

“…Ojeda, ; Ybarra, ). By mobilising geopolitical ecology, we develop synergies between the careful attention to multi‐scale environmental politics in political ecology, and the “discursive‐material co‐constitution of global institutional politics” (Bigger & Neimark, , p. 14).…”

“…This explicit encounter between critical geopolitics and political ecology is not necessarily new (Benjaminsen et al., ; Dalby, ; Harris, ; Parenti, ), but remains timely, as the effects of climate change and some of the massive institutions that are most responsible, such as the US military, are left generally unchecked, both within the critical literature and outside the academy. Here, we emphasise that the military's “self‐styled relationship to the environment justifies the self‐provisioning of infrastructure and material resources needed to carry out the protection of scarce nature, both home and abroad” (Bigger & Neimark, , p. 16). Our geopolitical ecological framework moves scholarship on “global natures” into new analytical territory by incorporating the material elements of hydrocarbons and its supply lines that actually shape geopolitical relations.…”

“…Once past those tipping points, the impacts of climate change will continue to be more intense, prolonged, and widespread, giving cover to even more extensive US military interventions. It has been argued elsewhere (Bigger & Neimark, ) that it is probably good that the military has invested in the development of advanced biofuels technology and markets. But the entire point of these fuels is that they are “drop‐in” – they can be used in existing military kit – which means that, whenever convenient or cheaper, the infrastructure is already in place to undo whatever marginal gains have been made in decarbonisation.…”

“…The US military sees climate change as a “threat multiplier,” or a condition that will exacerbate other threats, and is fast becoming one of the leading federal agencies in the United States to invest in research and adoption of renewable energy (Gilbert, ). These investments include solar and biofuels, as well as reinforcing base infrastructure to mitigate the effects of sea‐level rise (Bigger & Neimark, ).…”

“…In our view, one cannot understand the importance of the US military's supply chains without understanding its geopolitical ecology , and vice versa. Geopolitical ecology is a theoretical framework that combines political ecology with critical geopolitics to gain deeper insight into the impact of large geopolitical institutions on environmental change (Bigger & Neimark, ). For us, focusing on the geopolitical ecology of military fuel consumption means paying particular attention to the material‐ecological metabolic flows (e.g., hydrocarbon‐based fuels) enacted through US military supply chains.…”