Thank you Marty for allowing SSCAN to post your speech.
Hello and thank you for being here.
Today I would like to tell you about how Veterans For Peace is addressing militarism and the climate.
On the national front, Veterans For Peace has initiated The Climate Crisis and Militarism Project as part of the world-wide movement to mitigate the climate crisis and promote peace and justice (climate, racial and economic).
As educators and activists, we focus on the U.S. military’s damage to the climate:
* through its vast and largely unreported greenhouse gas emissions,
* in its role as military protection for oil corporations,
* through its squandering of trillions needed for addressing climate and people’s needs,
* and with its promotion of war – a human, climate and environmental disaster.
Within this Project is a campaign called NO MAS! No Military Air Shows
which is designed to engage with climate/environmental groups and others to work towards ending all military air shows on the basis of the gratuitous pollution emitted by these entertainment-oriented performances. This furthers discussion of the military’s contribution to the climate crisis and spotlights the fact the U.S. military is the world’s single largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels and the world’s single largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases.
Speaking of air shows, let me tell you a little about the Blue Angels.
They are currently flying the F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet which burns fuel at the rate of about 1200 gallons/hr. These jets burn a highly toxic propellant fuel which is called JP-5, some real nasty stuff but I'll get to that in a minute.
The Blue Angel team consists of 14 pilots, each of whom have to have 1500 hours of flight time to qualify to join the team, and a Commanding Officer (CO) who needs 3000 hours to qualify.
So the fuel burned for just one pilot to qualify to join the Blue Angels is 1500 hours times 1200 gal/hr or 1.8 million gallons. Multiple this by the 14 pilots and add in the CO's 3000 hours for a total of 28.8 million gallons of fuel - just to qualify.
According to the FY2024 Standard Fuel Price memorandum, a gallon of JP-5 fuel cost $3.55. So every new pilot who succeeds at becoming a Blue Angel cost the U.S. taxpayer approximately $6,390,000 per pilot - just for the fuel used to become a member of the team! For the entire team, it costs $102,240,000!
And this does not include the tens of millions of gallons used in the training for the shows, the flying to and from the show sites from Pensacola, Florida, where they are based, and the 30 or so shows a year they do. We are talking about some serious tax dollars here, folks!
Now back to JP-5, the nasty fuel used by these jets.
JP-5 is actually a highly refined kerosene that contains a complex mixture of hundreds of volatile chemical additives, some of which are carcinogenic and most of which can be toxic to liver, brain, kidney and human or animal immune systems.
And the many additives in the fuel do not burn “clean”, no matter what the military says.
The post-combustion exhaust from jet engines is equally poisonous to air, water, soil, animal, plant and all forms of aquatic life. Now think about those tens of millions of gallons of burnt fuel spewing their toxins into the environment just for the purposes of entertainment. That is sick!
So you can see that Blue Angel air shows come at a considerable cost.
So what does this mean locally?
In Seattle, NO MAS! means working to stop the Blue Angels of Death from being part of the annual Seafair event. The Blue Angels are scheduled to be at both the 2024 and the 2025 Seafair events.
Towards this end, VFP92 is part of an alliance called Seafair Climate Action Campaign, which is comprised of various local groups with similar concerns related to the Blue Angels presence at Seafair:
* the burning fossil fuels that cause climate change,
* the noise pollution, and
* the outdated practices glorifying the military instead of the beauty of our unique city.
SCAC is meeting regularily and working on the plans for the 2024 Seafair event. We encourage you to join with us to stop military air shows - NO MAS!
You can learn more about this and connect The Seafair Climate Action Campaign at www.seaclimateaction.info
Thank you for letting me speak here today.