The Military and Environmental Destruction – Course material

The military is a major polluter. Her, burning oil fields during Iraqi Freedom.
The Military is a major polluter

At a climate conference in Denmark back in 2018, I volunteered to give a talk about the connection between the military and climate change.
That speech was not a fixed part of my curriculum in any of my teaching activities at the time.
I started to become interested in this connection as a result of some conversations and discussions I had at various other conferences.



At the time there was no attention on this matter in the general debate about Climate Change.
It was not easy to find figures and sources I could use for my talk.
I managed to put something together and it turned out to be a success.
Since then, I have been asked to give this presentation several more times.
Many of my colleagues and students have also asked me to share my course material.

Therefore, I  recently reworked and updated the material and you will download it below.

You can try and integrate the material in your own class, or you can also book me to hold the presentation.
For this purpose, I have adopted it, for holding it online.

The connenction between the military and environmental destruction is an important issue

Personally, I think this is an important issue to raise awareness about.
I often get the impression that in the mainstream media a lot of important connections are left out or being missed when talking about Climate Change.
There are a lot of economical interests in preserving things the way they are.
Warfare is no exception to this.
Therefore, the matter deserves more focus. The U.S. military, for instance, is the world’s largest institutional consumer of oil. Surely, that makes an impact on the environment.

Downloading the materials

Click on the links below, to download the files.

  1. Military and environmental destruction – PDF file with slides
  2. Military and environmental destruction – PDF file with slides and speaker’s notes

I hope, that you find the materials useful.
I should note, however, that the course was designed for high-school or adult audiences in mind.

As I already stated, you can also book me to hold this course.
These days I generally prefer to do it online, as I am traveling quite a bit around.