Climate change a security issue, veterans coalition says

NORFOLK

Robin Eckstein deployed to Iraq as an Army truck driver shortly after the U.S. invasion in 2003. Her job: hauling supplies to U.S. bases from the Baghdad airport.

"Every day it was a roll of the dice as far as what we were going to encounter," she said. "Was it going to be IEDs? Sniper fire? Was anybody going to be shot or killed? This was my life while I was there.

"I really thought: Why are we doing things the way we're doing?"

One of the primary cargoes for those convoys was petroleum - fuel for the massive machinery of war.

Eckstein began wondering: Why couldn't the vehicles be more fuel-efficient? Why not use solar generators? Why not insulate the troops' tents?

A more energy-efficient war effort would have meant "that's one extra trip outside the gate I don't have to make," she said. "That's one time I don't have to get shot at."

Eckstein came home determined to help make the case to her fellow Americans that energy efficiency isn't some pie-in-the-sky issue. It's a matter of dollars and cents - and literally a matter of life and death for U.S. troops in harm's way.

Eckstein was on a panel of speakers Tuesday evening at the MacArthur Memorial spreading the word that climate change and U.S. dependence on foreign oil are threats to national security.

Another panelist was Joseph Bouchard, a retired Navy captain who has been commanding officer of Norfolk Naval Station and a one-term Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates from Virginia Beach.

Climate change is no theoretical threat, Bouchard said: The military services are already spending millions of dollars in Hampton Roads adapting to one of its primary effects, rising sea levels.

The military is also taking a leading role in moving toward renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, he said.

The Department of Defense "gets it," Bouchard said. "They understand the vulnerability, the threat caused by climate change. They understand the vulnerability caused by reliance on imported oil, and they are taking action."

But the military alone can't move the nation to a new renewable-energy paradigm, said Lt. Gen. Norman Seip, retired commander of the 12th Air Force. "It's going to take our entire nation," he said. "It's going to take a cultural change."

The Norfolk meeting was one in a series of such events being held around the country by Operation Free, a year-old coalition of veterans dedicated to making the connection between national security and clean energy.

Operation Free is an advocacy campaign of the Truman National Security Project, a Washington think tank with several prominent Democrats on its advisory board. Among them are Madeleine Albright, who was secretary of state, and William Perry, who was secretary of defense, in the Clinton administration.

Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com