The United States Military is a huge user of fossil fuels and energy, in the states and overseas.  The greenhouses gases emitted through utilities the military uses, such as tanks, planes, boats, humvees etc is very high, and polluting the environment.  That is why it is so important the the U.S military is taking steps towards a more sustainable future.  The military is taking account for their environment and putting fourth the effort to change the way they operate.  If an entity so powerful and influential  in our country can attempt to take a more sustainable path, this lights the way for more people to get involved and live more sustainably.  

Thanks to everyone who has been following my posts and thanks for all you're support!

semper fi! 

And a big thank you to all of our troops serving overseas and on the home front!

Kaneohe

Kaneohe is a Marine Corps base located in Hawaii.  The base has been called a leader in sustainability and is striving for complete self-sufficincy.  They have upgraded systems to conserve water and have put solar water heaters on all buildings.  Using green initiatives in 2008 to 2009 their energy bill was cut $23 million to $18 million, which is a significant difference for a growing base and community.  There was a phase-out of plastic bags and the cafeterias switched from styrofoam containers and plastic utensils to cornstarch and sugarcane, which are both biodegradable.  The airfields have switched over to all LED lighting too that use far less energy then the light bulbs they were previously using.

Standard 189.1

The Standard 189.1 is a new standard of design plans for "green" buildings.  It was put out in early 2010 and provides designs on sustainability, water use efficiency, energy efficiency, to things like the buildings affect on the atmosphere and what materials and resources used to build the buildings.  The Army has recently decided to adopt the Standard 189.1 as their new plans of design for new buildings and infrastructures. The Standard sets requirements that the buildings will have to meet, and the regulations will be applied to buildings in the U.S and overseas.

So a few posts back I wrote about the Military Installation Sustainability Program that was recently started by the Department of Defense.  Someone commented bringing up a good point about how the military is one of the biggest users of fuel, and this got me looking around and seeing what, if anything, the military is doing to help lower their use of fuel.  Well, since 2000, the Air Force has been working on an alternative fuel and testing different things to power equipment such as aircrafts, ships, and tanks.  The Air Force aims to by 2016, have half of their aircrafts in use alternative fuel blends that emit fewer greenhouse gases.  In 2009, the Navy and Marine Corps both created the Green Strike Group that plans on using nuclear vessels and ships powered by biofuels ready to be deployed and used in action by 2016.  The Navy hopes that by 2020 half of the energy they use will be produced from alternative sources.  The Army is a little behind as of right now (no jabs at the Army even though I am a Marine Brat!). They haven't established any goals as of now, but are looking into and alternative fuels for combat vehicles.  The Department of Defense has been funding money for testing the alternative fuels for the use of tactical systems.
Pretty cool stuff I think, I mean, yes this is a difficult task to take on, the military depends on equipment powered by fuel, a lot of fuel.  It's not going to be a quick process switching over aircrafts, tanks, ships, and all their vehicles, but every bit makes a difference and the Department of Defense has shown their dedication to adopting more "green" technology through promoting these projects and giving the projects the funding they need.

Carbon Footprints

So for class we had to do some looking into carbon footprints.  Now most people have heard the expression "carbon footprint", but what exactly is it?  A carbon footprint is simply a representation of the affects one has on global climate change due to the amount of greenhouse gases they produce.  Carbon Dioxide is usually the greenhouse gas that most focus on but there are others such as: methane, nitrous oxide, tropospheric ozone (from vehicles and power plants), and chlorofluorocarbons (used in refrigeration, air conditioning, and other industrial processes).
I went to a website, safeclimate.net, which allowed me to figure out my family's carbon footprint.  I also figured out the carbon footprint of one of my friend's family.  My family's carbon footprint was calculated for only 3 people even though there are 5 people in my family because I only used the travel information and utilities bills for my house and there are only 3 of us living there, my mom, sister, and me.  So with that in mind the carbon footprint will be even bigger but more on that in a minute.  So our carbon footprint was 3613 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air per month.  YIKES! And yet this was average according to the website.  When I told my mother she started getting all worried wondering how to lower it, she sounded relieved when I simply said turn the lights off.  83% of the the carbon footprint was from energy and 17% was from transportation, which actually surprised me.  My mom does a lot of driving, we were guessing around 9,000 but I'm sure it's more.  She does a lot of traveling around for her work, going to different states and driving out of town repeatedly during the week, but it was still the energy that was majority of our carbon footprint.
My friend's family's carbon footprint for a family of 4 was 4148 pounds per month, which according to the survey was again average.  Most of the numbers were pretty close, their energy for their home was a bit higher, but there is another person living there, but the carbon footprint per person in the family was lower then mine, I have a feeling it may be due to the traveling my family does.
Now I know my family's carbon footprint is grossly more then what I have calculated thanks to dear old dad. (ofcourse this is a joke, I hold nothing against my father, he's a die hard recycler, reducer, and re-user).   As my father is out of the country right now on active duty it is very VERY hard to figure out his carbon footprint.  He is living on Delaram in Afghanistan, and I have been trying to get some numbers to  make some sort of rough estimate on his carbon footprint.  Just figuring out his travel has been a hassle though.  Let's see, now from the top, he's flown from Michigan to North Carolina to Washington DC back to North Carolina to Maine to Germany to Manas then to Afghanistan.  Then has been all over Afghanistan since, bouncing back and forth between Delaram and Leatherneck and other bases.  So discussing with my dad we have come up with about 17,000 miles of travel, on plane that is.  I don't even know how to start in vehicle, which is of course a huge humvee.  Yep, my family's carbon footprint is off the wall right now.  I'm going to keep working on these numbers, and try to figure out my dad's carbon footprint.  I'll keep posting on any updates.

Military Installation Sustainability

The Department of Defense has started up a new program called the Military Installation Sustainability Program.  The plan is to make the United State's infrastructures more efficient and adjust military bases to the changing environment.  They plan to focus on land use and using clean energy.
The program is also looking into keeping military bases and communities more separated.  Often cities will grow around a military base because of all the people in a base it brings a need for other jobs surrounding it, but the government would like to start setting up zones that communities can't expand out into around bases to prevent residents from pollution from aircrafts and things like that.
Lastly they are looking into setting up more protection for land conservation.  The Department of Defense wants to allocate resources to states to use to preserve open space and farmland.

I thought this was very cool when I came across this in some research.  Right now the three "big topics" of our generation is the war overseas, the environment, and the economy.  The Department of Defense is in a way taking on all of these right here, making military bases more efficient for the environment and economically efficient too.

In this blog I want to focus on the troops serving over seas during the war right now, and the way they live on their bases.  I want to look at the ways they live, see how sustainable their bases are, and maybe think about ways that the sustainability of military bases in foreign lands could perhaps become even more sustainable.  I wanted to look into this because my father is in the Marine Corps and is currently located in Afghanistan.  I have communication with him through email, and the occasional phone call, but usually that is for catching up.  I do know about his life over there, i've seen pictures of his base, and he tells me about it too, but I would like to get a little better picture of what our countries military bases are like over seas.  And I also hope to shed a little light on deployed military life to people who may not have a close one serving our country and may not know as much about what goes on over seas.  I would like to point out that this blog has nothing to do with pro war or anti war ideas, and I do realize that everyone has their own opinions on this topic, I will not discuss it, it has nothing to do with sustainability.  My focus is on the "home life" of the service men, how their bases are set up, etc. I would also like to point out, that even if you are not pro war you should always respect and support our countries service men, they are an honor to our nation and risk their lives to uphold our constitution and our rights, and we should thank them regardless of our political stance.

So in class on Tuesday of this week, there was a guest speaker, Steven Bertman, who I thought was pretty awesome, very entertaining and just a good speaker in my opinion.  He discussed the topic of carbon footprints, and how we make our carbon footprint.  He gave us a few numbers on the where the United States gets their energy from, 85% comes from fossil fuels (I can't be the only one who finds this number jaw dropping), 8% from nuclear energy, and a PATHETIC 7% from renewable sources such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and biomass.  Energy from the sun only makes up .07% of all the energy the U.S uses.  But heres where things get crazy.  In one hour the United States alone gets enough sunlight on it's surface to generate enough electricity for  the entire nation and more.  But instead we burn through fossil fuels.  Then the idea was brought up of having a 50 by 50 grid of solar panels out in Arizona or Texas to generate energy for the U.S, how efficient and sustainable would that be to power our nation?  And then one pessimist brings up, "well how are we going to maintain this? How are we going to harness this energy into something useful?"  It made me think, when the first person struck oil did a how to manual spring out too telling everyone how to power the world with it? NO! People used their heads and figured it out, if people can have the knowledge and creativity to build and power everything we have now running on fossil fuel why can't we just recreate using solar energy?  And this tangent got me thinking.....
In the bases over seas, like my dad's, everything is powered by generators.  Lots and lots of generators.  My dad even said in an email once, "I often think when I am walking home at the end of the day how nice it will be to walk outside and not hear a generator."  Well what if they didn't use generators?  What if they had solar panels set up to power up their bases?  The panels could be placed even on the top of their tents, chow halls, their gym, wherever.  It could be more efficient and cost cutting for the military.  There would be lest money spent on trucks transporting out oil, and research shows that on a large base the use of solar panels can reduce the amount of fuel generators use from 25 gallons a day to 3 to 5.  Thats a substantial difference.  
Just an idea, it might be nice to have a moment of silence and clarity over there I can imagine.