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A new documentary details how the US military is destroying all forms of life—from oceans, plants, and animals to the communities it attacks and even the people who fight its wars.
In the opening scene of Abby Martin and Mike Prysner’s new documentary, Earth’s Greatest Enemy, an unhoused veteran sits and plays piano in an encampment in Brentwood, California. He lives in an encampment popularly known as “Veterans Row,” where tents are draped in US flags and people walking by are reminded of how often the U.S. military chews people up and spits them out. The man starts reciting the lines to an old Army recruiting commercial; the film cuts to the commercial itself, featuring the same unhoused veteran. He still remembers all the lines.
Earth's Greatest Enemy is a documentary about the climate crisis and imperialism: how the US military is the largest institution pushing us toward ecological collapse. At face value, the opening scene of a veteran who lives out on the street might seem unrelated. Over the course of the film, Martin, with careful precision, illustrates that the destruction of the climate by the US military is not only being done to the environment around us, but being done to us, as is shown in the scenes highlighting the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune.
Earth’s Greatest Enemy captures the unfathomable breadth of ecological and human suffering caused by militarism. It covers the cost of war to the oceans, animal and plant life, fresh water, and more. If someone lives in the belly of this military beast, Earth's Greatest Enemy should be a required watch.
One segment of the film focuses on the US military’s impact on Earth’s oceans, specifically during the US-led war games, RIMPAC, the largest maritime military exercise in the world. They fly Growler jets over the ocean and practice sinking exercises, exploding decommissioned ships in the open water. They fire live rounds and pollute the ocean for five or six straight weeks. Martin documents the US military detonating mountains in Okinawa and taking the dirt to fill in coral reefs so the military can use the land for part of a base. One of the film’s most surprising revelations is that the US military determines how many sea mammals they can kill. All of this, of course, affects fishing and biodiversity that sustains the oceans—and human and animal life around the world, most directly the people of the Pacific, whether it be Hawai’i, Okinawa, or the other islands where the US has set up permanent military outposts.
To fight for the future of the planet, we in the anti-war movement must join forces with the climate movement. Our enemies are one and the same: the war profiteers and politicians driving us toward climate collapse.
Earth’s Greatest Enemy also explores the water pollution caused by the US military. Halfway through the film, we hear from Kim Ann Callan, who has spent the last 15 years uncovering the impact of toxic waste from the military at Camp Lejeune. For years, the military poisoned the groundwater, which, in turn, poisoned military families. As a result, whole families got sick with cancer; the US military tried to cover it up. The film shows Callan walking through a cemetery with rows of gravestones of infants, with headstones reading “born and died” on the same date. Multiple families lost more than one baby to the illnesses caused by the military’s pollution.
Callan reflects: “Going into this, I had a whole different vision of the military. And I had a lot of respect for the military… I don’t have respect for the government or the military anymore.” The poisoning of military families on the base didn’t just happen at Camp Lejeune: The film exposes how toxic US military bases are worldwide—with just as devastating stories in each of the 800-plus military bases globally in over 80 countries and in hundreds throughout the US.
Martin, of course, discusses the impact conventional warfare has on the planet, like when the US or one of its proxies, like Israel, relentlessly bombards land over an extended period of time. The result is often total ecocide, where survivors have next to nothing left to grow and live off of.
The film reveals the cumulative impact of the bullets fired in Iraq. Conservative estimates suggest that, for every person killed in the US wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 250,000 bullets were used. Each bullet injects lead, mercury, and depleted uranium into air, water, and land. Furthermore, studies have found titanium in the lungs of US soldiers on bases and in the hair samples of children in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US wages wars not only on the air, water, and land, but also on bodies, bloodlines, and generations of human beings.
The US military is destroying all forms of life. And for what? Even those who fight the wars are ultimately left out on the street when they return home.
By the end of the film, it’s abundantly clear: The US military is truly Earth’s greatest enemy. It controls—and threatens all life on Earth. Yet as organizers within the anti-war movement, it’s abundantly clear how siloed the fight against it can be from the rest of the environmental movement. To fight for the future of the planet, we in the anti-war movement must join forces with the climate movement. Our enemies are one and the same: the war profiteers and politicians driving us toward climate collapse.
Organizers on the front lines of the struggle against this planetary crisis of militarism—from Hawai’i to Okinawa to Atlanta—understand this. The struggle for the land is inextricably bound to the struggle against militarism. We have no choice but to cut through the political, philanthropic, and organizational red lines that separate us. Because, as Martin and Prysner elucidate, through compassionate human storytelling and radically honest journalism, the war machine will eventually come for us all. We must act now.
A new report tracks the monthly wealth of fossil fuel billionaires.
Welcome to the age of Oil-Garchy, where the concentrated wealth and power of the fossil fuel industry dominates our political system. After donating heavily to Trump’s campaign, the industry has already begun to reap return on their investments.
Trump has nominated some of the most vociferous climate deniers and advocates for the oil, gas, and coal industries for key positions overseeing the environment, energy, and public lands. Former Congressman Lee Zeldin has been nominated to run the Environmental Protection Agency and Chris Wright, CEO of fracking company Liberty Energy, is poised to oversee the Energy Department.
In addition to putting drillers in charge of the watershed, the financial returns are beginning to flow in likely anticipation of pro-oil and gas policies. The top 15 fossil fuel industry billionaires have already seen their personal combined wealth rise from $267.6 billion to $307.9 billion, a gain of over $40 billion, or 15.2 percent since April 2024.
The Climate Accountability Research Project (CARP) released its first monthly tracking report, Pipeline to Power: Trump and the “Oil-garch” Wealth Surge, that will monitor wealth gains and losses by top billionaires in the sector over the coming year. According to the report, the first wave of big wealth gainers include:
On April 11, 2024, the CEOs and leaders of the oil and gas industries gathered at Mar-A-Lago for a meeting with candidate Trump about energy policy. Trump used the occasion, according to witnesses present, to make a brazen transactional pitch: raise $1 billion for his campaign and he would do their bidding. Trump told the assembled that the amount of money they would save in taxes and legal expenses after he repealed regulations would more than cover their billion-dollar contribution. Trump implied that if elected, he would expand offshore drilling, weaken environmental rules, and scrap electric vehicle and wind policies and other regulations opposed by the industry groups. Trump vowed to reverse President Biden’s pause on new LNG exports.
Present at the Mar-a-Lago Club on that April day were industry leaders such as Harold Hamm, the wildcat fracker and chairman of Continental Resources, who played an influential role in Trump’s first administration, pushing for Scott Pruitt to serve as Trump’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Also present was Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota and Trump’s nominee to Interior Secretary, a position overseeing gas leases on public lands. Other attendees included leaders from the American Petroleum Institute and executives from Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, along with fracking producers Cheniere Energy and EQT.
Harold Hamm and Vicki Hollub, CEO of Occidental Petroleum, organized donors within the fossil fuel sector to support Trump and funnel money to his campaign. They didn’t raise a billion dollars, but they helped move hundreds of millions to PACs supporting Trump and directly to the candidate.
According to Climate Connections at Yale University, the fossil fuel industry spent $219 million to influence the new U.S. government. This included $26 million in direct oil and gas industry contributions to the campaigns of policymakers taking office in 2025, with 88 percent going to Republican lawmakers. The analysis found an additional $151 million in outside spending, including donations to political action committees (PACs), and $67 million to PACs supporting candidates. Nearly $23 million in oil and gas industry funds went directly to candidate Trump and his PACs.
Trump’s mega-donors included banking and oil scion Timothy Mellon and Timothy Dunn, CEO billionaire of CrownQuest, a major oil and fracking company based in Texas. George Bishop, the CEO of oil and gas company GeoSouthern Energy, donated $1 million to Trump’s campaign, with his wife forking over an additional $500,000. Fossil fuel billionaires Kelcy Warren and Harold Hamm donated $5 million and $1 million respectively to Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.
This is what “Oil-garchy” looks like. See the whole report, Pipeline to Power: Trump and the “Oil-garch” Wealth Surge, at www.climatecriminals.org.
One wonders if the world had paid even the slightest attention to Gaza and the cries of people trapped behind walls, barbed wire, and electric fences, whether the current war and genocide could have been avoided.
The first official reference to Gaza becoming increasingly uninhabitable was made by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, or UNCTAD, in 2012, when the population of the Gaza Strip was estimated at 1.8 million inhabitants.
The intention of the report, The Gaza Strip: The Economic Situation and the Prospects for Development, was not merely to prophesize, but to warn that if the world continued to stand idle in the face of the ongoing blockade on Gaza, a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent.
Yet, little was done, though the U.N. continued with its countdown, increasing the frequency and urgency of its warnings, especially following major wars.
Even after the devastating war on Gaza ends and the rebuilding of the strip concludes, the ecological and environmental harm that Israel has caused will remain for many years to come.
Another report in 2015 from UNCTAD stated that the Gaza crisis had intensified following the most destructive war to that date, the year before. The war had destroyed hundreds of factories, thousands of homes, and displaced tens of thousands of people.
By 2020, though, based on the criteria set by the U.N., Gaza should have become "uninhabitable." Yet, little was done to remedy the crisis. The population grew rapidly, while resources, including Gaza's land mass, shrank due to the ever-expanding Israeli "buffer zone." The prospects for the "world's largest open-air prison" became even dimmer.
Yet, the international community did little to heed the call of UNCTAD and other U.N. and international institutions. The humanitarian crisis—situated within a prolonged political crisis, a siege, repeated wars, and daily violence—worsened, reaching, on October 7, 2023, the point of implosion.
One wonders if the world had paid even the slightest attention to Gaza and the cries of people trapped behind walls, barbed wire, and electric fences, whether the current war and genocide could have been avoided.
It is all moot now. The worst-case scenario has actualized in a way that even the most pessimistic estimates by Palestinian, Arab, or international groups could not have foreseen.
Not only is Gaza now beyond "uninhabitable," but, according to Greenpeace, it will be "uninhabitable for generations to come." This does not hinge on the resilience of Palestinians in Gaza, whose legendary steadfastness is hardly disputed. However, there are essential survival needs that even the strongest people cannot replace with their mere desire to survive.
In just the first 120 days of war, "staggering" carbon emissions were estimated at 536,410 tons of carbon dioxide. Ninety percent of that deadly pollution was "attributed to Israel's air bombardment and ground invasion," according to Greenpeace, which concluded that the total sum of carbon emissions "is greater than the annual carbon footprint of many climate-vulnerable nations."
A report issued around the same time by the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) painted an equally frightening picture of what was taking place in Gaza as a direct result of the war. "Water and sanitation have collapsed," it declared last June. "Coastal areas, soil, and ecosystems have been severely impacted," it continued.
But that was over seven months ago, when parts of Gaza were still standing. Now, almost all of Gaza has been destroyed. Garbage has been piling up for 15 months without a single facility to process it efficiently. Disease is widespread, and all hospitals have either been destroyed in the bombings, burned to the ground, or bulldozed. Many of the sick are dying in their tents without ever seeing a doctor.
Without any outside assistance, it was only natural for the disaster to worsen. Last December, Médecins Sans Frontières issued a report titled Gaza: Life in a Death Trap. The report, a devastating read, describes the state of medical infrastructure in Gaza, which can be summed up in a single word: non-existent.
Israel has attacked 512 healthcare facilities between October 2023 and September 2024, killing 500 healthcare workers. This means that a population is trying to survive during one of the harshest wars ever recorded, without any serious medical attention. This includes nearly half a million people suffering from various mental health disorders.
By December, Gaza's Government Media Office reported that there are an estimated 23 million tons of debris resulting from the dropping of 75,000 tons of explosives—in addition to other forms of destruction. This has released 281,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air.
Once the war is over, Gaza will be rebuilt. Though Palestinian sumud (steadfastness) is capable of restoring Gaza to its former self, however long it takes, a study conducted by Queen Mary University in the U.K. said that, for the destroyed structures to be rebuilt, an additional 60 million tons of CO2 will be released into an already severely impacted environment.
In essence, this means that even after the devastating war on Gaza ends and the rebuilding of the strip concludes, the ecological and environmental harm that Israel has caused will remain for many years to come.
It is baffling that the very Western countries, which speak tirelessly about environmental protection, preservation, and warning against carbon emissions, are the same entities that helped sustain the war on Gaza, either through arming Israel or remaining silent in the face of the ongoing atrocities.
The price of this hypocrisy is the enduring suffering of millions of people and the devastation of their environment. Isn't it time for the world to wake up and collectively declare: enough is enough?