To: Secretary of Defense Ash Carter
Save energy....Save lives
Sign the Anderson memo, an across the board energy efficiency policy that makes every member of the military accountable for their energy usage as part of their job performance, and establishes energy consumption as a Key Performance Parameter (KPP) for all military equipment purchases.
Why is this important?
Steve Anderson was a Brigadier General who served directly under Petraeus in Iraq in 2006. Tasked with saving the lives of soldiers, Anderson discovered that thousands of soldiers were dying on fuel convoys transporting fuel to generators for remote outposts."If Americans knew how our reliance on oil is putting our soldiers lives at risk, they'd be outraged" says Anderson. When Anderson and his staff developed a solution using spray foam insulation for military installations, it cut energy usage by 80%, saving billions in tax payer dollars, and countless lives of soldiers. Despite the success of the program, there's been little effort to expand the scope of the initiative, which is why we need an across the board energy efficiency policy. The actual memo that we want Ash Carter to sign can be found at http://www.greenthemilitary.org
The U.S. military is the largest consumer of energy and oil in the world, and our defense contractors also supply most of the world's militaries. The U.S. military's reliance on oil endangers the lives of American soldiers, costs taxpayers billions, and increases greenhouse gas emissions, which disrupts the climate and creates global instability.
Furthermore, technology developed by the U.S. military--GPS, Internet, Computers--often spills over into civilian life and becomes used around the world. Our military is also the envy of the world, and also trains many other militaries around the world, which means that practices adopted by the U.S. military often get adopted by other militaries, which affect their civilian populations as well.
If Ash Carter, the Secretary of Defense, were to sign a memo mandating energy efficiency from the top-down as a metric of job performance, establishing reporting and accounting mechanisms to make everyone accountable for their energy usage, and making energy consumption a Key Performance Parameter (KPP) for all military equipment purchases, it would create a chain reaction that can help lead the world away from a dependency on fossil fuels.
The U.S. military is the largest consumer of energy and oil in the world, and our defense contractors also supply most of the world's militaries. The U.S. military's reliance on oil endangers the lives of American soldiers, costs taxpayers billions, and increases greenhouse gas emissions, which disrupts the climate and creates global instability.
Furthermore, technology developed by the U.S. military--GPS, Internet, Computers--often spills over into civilian life and becomes used around the world. Our military is also the envy of the world, and also trains many other militaries around the world, which means that practices adopted by the U.S. military often get adopted by other militaries, which affect their civilian populations as well.
If Ash Carter, the Secretary of Defense, were to sign a memo mandating energy efficiency from the top-down as a metric of job performance, establishing reporting and accounting mechanisms to make everyone accountable for their energy usage, and making energy consumption a Key Performance Parameter (KPP) for all military equipment purchases, it would create a chain reaction that can help lead the world away from a dependency on fossil fuels.