Five years ago, USM psychology major Andrew Campbell was stationed in Mosul, Iraq as a logistics specialist in a maintenance platoon, or in his words, “like V.I.P., but for the Army.”
During his deployment, Campbell witnessed first-hand the military’s crippling dependence on fossil fuels.
“We spent a lot of time and energy trying to procure 10-weight oil,” says Campbell, “but it would often come back unusable because it was diluted with everything from transmission fluid to vegetable oil.”
The 26 year-old Iraq War veteran has since stepped out of the frying pan and into the Frialator — Campbell is now a chef de cheeseburger at Munjoy Hill market Colucci’s — but is still fighting on one front, having recently returned from a 12-day, 40-stop, cross-country bus tour from Montana to Maine, promoting clean energy and climate change legislation as a issue of national security alongside 25 similarly eco-minded vets.
“We’re funding both sides of the war on terror,” says Campbell, quoting former CIA director James Woolsey. Campbell noted that 11 of the 9/11 highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, a country whose control over precious oil resources has led to a cozy relationship with the U.S.
“We have strong economic ties [with Saudi Arabia] because of this source of energy,” says Campbell. “Imagine if they had been from Iran, they would have been bombed to the stone-age.”
Groups like Campbell’s Operation Free aim to promote clean energy legislation as a way to keep America’s billions in fuels expenditures from ending up in the hands of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.
The group’s site emphasizes that while the U.S. consumes 25 percent of the world’s oil production, it controls less than three percent of the supply, and bought $160 billion from Saudi Arabia alone for its oil last year.
“We could be taking that money and investing it in clean energy technology,” says Campbell.
Campbell says clean energy legislation is not just about cutting off funding for terrorism at the pump, but also cutting out it’s supply of recruits by tackling climate change. Operation Free cites a 2007 study, in which 11 retired generals determined climate change is a “threat multiplier” that leads to political instability, and thus the potential for internal conflict and extremism.
“Parts of the world that are unstable are made more-so by warming, cooling, and droughts,” says Campbell. “If people can’t farm, they can’t eat, and that creates population shifts.”
He said that such migration in turn creates refugee camps, which are the number one source of recruits for terrorists, “al-Qaeda recognizes and capitalizes on that.”
As part of the Veterans for American Power Tour bus tour, Campbell got the chance to share his own experiences, and from town halls, to press conferences and radio interviews, urged citizens to write their senators and get clean energy legislation recognized as a major concern of their constituents.
“Talking about this as an issue of national security really does resonate with people” said Campbell, who found his message well-received with crowds across the northern route that went through North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and Northern New England.
Campbell recalls one press conference in Youngstown, Ohio where he was approached by an 80 year-old ex-Marine who fought in Korea. “He said ‘thank you for talking about this issue,’” said Campbell.
“I know members of the military are committed to doing whatever is necessary to defend the country,” said Campbell. “But we could allieviate ourselves of a great amount of suffering in the future if we address this now.”