“Earth’s Greatest Enemy” screening reveals the global cost of militarization—and how we fight back

Two months ago, as the US-Israeli war of aggression on Iran and Lebanon continued to heat up, another thermometer was quietly ticking higher in the background.

Largely unnoticed outside the areas it affected, in March the southwest US (and interior of BC) experienced an unprecedented heat wave, with multiple states smashing all-time single-day and -month temperature records. This was no one-day flash in the pan: the unseasonal temperatures lingered for nearly two weeks, causing alpine snowpack volume to melt down almost to nothing at a time when it should have been on its way to a typical mid-April peak.

The repercussions of this meteorological anomaly are only just starting to be grappled with. Many cities reliant on annual snowmelt are predicted to exhaust their municipal water supplies by mid-July, and some have already begun to declare water emergencies (while, notably, forgoing restrictions on industrial water use, typically an order of magnitude larger than residential consumption).

The heat wave and its attendant risk of drought and massive wildfires this summer are, of course, consequences of the rabid burning of fossil fuels by Western countries for the past century and a half, emissions from which have now raised global temperatures 1.5°C higher than their pre-industrial average. The enormous quantity of energy being trapped in the Earth’s climate system by anthropogenic greenhouse gases is starting to make itself known with undeniable vengeance.

At the same time, the systems of extraction and profiteering that have facilitated this headlong sprint into ecological catastrophe are facing one of their most significant shocks in history, as the US and Israel’s ill-fated attempt at regime change in Iran continues to rock the global fossil fuel supply chain.

While imperial rivals such as China have seen the writing on the wall and invested massively in a renewable roll-out over the past decade to reduce their dependence on foreign oil, the US has reversed course on the global trend towards decarbonization, preferring instead to pilfer what resources it needs at the barrel of a gun.

All of this might lead one to wonder: is it a coincidence that the world’s largest cumulative contributor to the climate crisis also spends more on its military than the next six countries combined?

Earth’s Greatest Enemy (2025), a new film by journalist and documentarian Abby Martin (99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film (2013), Gaza Fights For Freedom (2019)), answers that question with a resounding “no.”

On Tuesday, April 21—the day before Earth Day—Filter Cafe (206 Piccadilly St.) hosted a screening of the film, followed by discussion of the impact an increasingly-militarized world will have on the greatest threat our species has ever faced.

As American As Apple Pie

Martin’s documentary opens on a shaky handheld shot of the detritus-strewn asphalt around “Veterans Row,” a protest encampment that was held from 2020-2021 outside the Veterans’ Affairs office in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California. The camera scans along the pavement before panning up to reveal the source of the haunting, jangling soundtrack accompanying the cold open: a rundown piano sheltered under loosely-hanging tarps, played by a man in a toque and several layers of light jackets. “I’m such a fool,” he intones plainly, and then in a crooning mock sing-song: “I am a fool for you, America.”

The man’s name is Lavon Johnson, and he is just one of thousands of Iraq War veterans who returned home to a nation that, satisfied with their contribution to its political designs abroad, cast them aside and left them to shoulder the lifelong cost. Johnson sustained chronic nerve damage from hydraulic fluid he handled while serving, and now plays despite the pain in his hands, hoping to extend their use as long as possible before they become permanently paralyzed. The shot switches and we see the dwellings he and the other members of Veterans Row inhabit: fraying tents staked haphazardly on the sidewalk, each bearing an American flag draped with sardonic pride over the entrance.

This scene alone could serve as a thesis statement for much of Martin’s work, which has focused on the ravaging effects of US overseas military excursions—both on the innocent civilians they harm, and the disenfranchised Americans compelled to enact them through a mix of propaganda and economic coercion.

Martin’s husband and co-director of the film, Mike Prysner, is also an Iraq War veteran, and has since spoken out on the injustices he witnessed and was forced to commit on behalf of an institution that lured him in when he was only 17 years old. The two met over their shared commitment to opposing US intervention in Iraq and other countries in the early 2010s, and developed much of their work as short documentaries for The Empire Files, an online series Martin has hosted since 2015.

Then, in 2020, the pair had their first child, which transformed Martin’s concern for the future world they would grow up in, causing what she describes as “profound climate anxiety”. She recounts in the film how this motivated her to start work on Earth’s Greatest Enemy, as she began to see connections between the destructive consequences of war and militarism on people and their devastating effects on the Earth itself. As she inquires: “If our military was so unparalleled in size, what impact was that having on the planet?”

Early on in the film, Martin highlights the mind-boggling numbers associated with the US military’s consumption of fossil fuels and consequent greenhouse gas emissions: 270,000 barrels of oil burned per day, amounting to 55 million tons of CO₂ equivalent released per year, which expands to a staggering 165 million tons of CO₂ eq/year when accounting for the total emissions inherent in the manufacturing, distribution, and other associated processes for all of its weapons, vehicles, and equipment. This makes the US military the largest single institutional consumer of fossil fuels globally. Were it a country of its own, it would place 47th in emissions, ahead of more than 150 others. And the US is merely the head of a larger neocolonial organism; at their 2025 summit in the Hague, NATO member states pledged to increase their military spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. As Martin explains, even before this recent escalation, the previous 2% target would have put NATO forces on track to hit a collective 300 million tons of CO₂ equivalent emitted per year by 2028—more than half of the world’s nations combined.

The scale of these figures is so enormous it can be hard to wrap one’s head around them in a concrete way. Barry Sanders, author of the 2009 book The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism, describes it to Martin thus: “To reduce all this down to numbers is really numbing. Numbers numb.” To counter this, the documentary shifts to exploring a range of more specific impacts the military has had in the US and around the world, from poisoning water supplies to killing wildlife in the name of operational convenience.

A Lethal Legacy

One of the most infamous examples covered in the film was the contamination that occurred from the early 50s to the late 80s at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. For over three decades, large amounts of volatile organic compounds were released into the wells supplying the base, likely through a combination of fuel spills and unregulated use of harsh cleaners. While testing eventually revealed the presence of these chemicals, the US Marine Corps ignored the warnings and covered up the environmental assessments; as a result, the contaminated wells were kept in use for several more years, continuing to poison residents until they were finally shut down in 1985.

Most of the nearly 1 million people affected were not informed until decades afterwards, and legal proceedings to redress the lifelong health impacts are ongoing to this day.

In Okinawa, Japan, more than 30 US military installations have persisted since the end of the Second World War, with plans for expansion continuing into the present. Martin follows a group of activists protesting the encroachment of a new base into Oura Bay, one of the most pristine and vulnerable natural environments left on the island, demonstrating how the military prioritizes its own operations over any concern for the impacts they might have on local ecosystems. Indeed, even the US’s own Environmental Protection Agency grants the Navy exemptions from its regulations, allowing up to 26,000,000 “takes”—instances of injury, harassment, or even direct killing—of marine mammals in the course of training and operations over the next five years, with zero repercussions.

The film documents several other instances of local resistance to US military incursions around the world, along with jaw-droppingly transparent admissions from military officials and weapons companies about their intentions for global domination and resource pilfering. As the timeline approaches the present, we end on a montage of protests and actions including the Stop Cop City land defenders in Atlanta, Georgia. Martin reflects on the refugee and water crises that will soon be instigated by climate change, and how the lethal police confrontation there was only a trial run for the tactics that will be used to violently suppress this coming unrest.

In spite of it all, there is some hope. After local protests documented in the film, an aquifer-contaminating fuel storage site on the island of O’ahu, Hawai’i was shut down by orders of the local state government, despite Navy pushback. But the monster we have seen unleashed in Gaza, Venezuela, Iran, Lebanon, and beyond will not be tamed easily. Its global threat demands our fiercest collective opposition.

Planetary Subjugation, Local Collaboration

After the film, there was a discussion of how to bring this message home to London. As Matthew Webb, Filter Cafe’s owner, pointed out while introducing the film, London and the surrounding region have a disproportionate responsibility to tackle these issues due to the number of existing and new military manufacturing contracts being awarded to companies in the area. Around 20 local businesses employing nearly 4,000 workers are already operating in the military sector, and these figures will only rise under the increased military spending push of the Carney government. 

London is also home to several academic institutions with close military ties, including the aviation school at Fanshawe College and military research and development partnerships at Western University. And the approval of a new police and firefighter training centre in south London last summer could lead to further militarization of an already-bloated police force, while the fire retardants used may release dangerous PFAS “forever chemicals” into the environment, as has already occurred at the local airport.

Webb distributed sticky notes and asked attendees to write down their ideas for how our city could shift away from the destructive arms economy. These were placed around a large letter Webb had begun drafting to London-Fanshawe MP Kurt Holman, whose riding is home to General Dynamics Land Systems, the largest military manufacturer in the region. While none of the politicians, union leaders, or weapons company executives that Webb invited to the screening attended (including all of London’s MPs and MPPs, London mayor Josh Morgan, seven city councillors, Unifor Local 27 leadership, and six General Dynamics Land Systems executives), Holman’s office did respond to say they were interested in viewing the film, lending some hope that he will at least be made aware of the problem. But under a government going all-in on arms deals and natural resource exploitation under the influence of corporate interests, it is difficult to see how this ship can be steered around in time.

The Hunger Driving The Beast

One poignant quote in the film from author and political theorist Jodi Dean sums up the dilemma: “It’s so frustrating that everybody in the world knows that the climate is heating. And so it would seem like, because everybody knows it, we should be able to solve it, but we can’t. And the reason we can’t is the larger structure in which we’re stuck hinders what we can do, and as long as we have that [capitalist] system in place, no matter what we want […] we’re not going to be able to do it.”

Indeed, the perverse incentives of the profit motive will inevitably push our planet towards catastrophe, no matter how much “innovation” or “green technology” are touted as escape hatches that can maintain the flow of fossil extraction while averting any consequences. Under the logic of capitalism, there is no reason not to reap the Earth’s resources as fast and ruthlessly as possible, and as Martin shows many times throughout the film in interviews with military leaders and politicians at weapons trade shows, the US political establishment is all too happy to assist in the pillage if it helps justify its enormous defence budget.

In Canada, too, we are seeing this play out, as economists openly tout the benefits of the Iranian oil crisis for Canadian fossil fuel companies, in turn producing a tax windfall for the government to offset its aggressive military expansion. To the extent these companies even keep up the pretence that they are “reducing” their climate impact, they only do so in order to give themselves plausible deniability—via the questionably-effective practices of carbon capture and storage, carbon credit offsets, or production of “cleaner-burning” fuels, among other tactics—while consistently increasing their total emissions year after year.

The climate crisis has recently taken a back seat amidst the chaos rained down by the second Trump administration, but it is high time we see the connections it has to every other fight for a peaceful, equitable, and hopeful future. As Webb put it, “it is beyond any one of us to change how our societies relate to [these issues], but by coming together like this, learning what is going on in the world at large, and deciding to move towards communities of care, we can and will make a difference.”