[CPEO-MEF] ENERGY: Efficiency needed in the field

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Save Energy, Save Our Troops

Opinion by STEVEN M. ANDERSON, Brigadier General, U.S. Army, Retired
New York Times
January 12, 2011

Arlington, Va.

A NATO oil tanker truck was blown up by insurgents at the 
Pakistan-Afghanistan border last week, and while no one was injured, the 
incident temporarily closed the Khyber Pass, the main supply artery for 
Western troops in the Afghan theater. This has become an all-too-routine 
occurrence; in the last nine years some 1,000 Americans have been killed 
on fuel-related missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Until the Defense Department develops battlefield policies recognizing 
that energy efficiency contributes to military effectiveness, more blood 
will be shed, billions of dollars will be wasted, our enemies will have 
thousands of vulnerable fuel trucks for targets and our commanders will 
continue to be distracted by the task of overseeing fuel convoys.

As the military's senior logistician in Iraq for 15 months in 2006 and 
2007, I tracked the tremendous amounts of fuel needed to power the 
generators providing electricity for air-conditioning and other 
essential uses in shelters hastily constructed of canvas, plywood and 
sheet metal. Today our troops in Afghanistan are furiously building more 
of the same. Nine years into that war, they are living more or less as 
Alexander the Great's men did 23 centuries ago - in often dangerous and 
always inefficient tents and shacks.

For many in the military, improving the situation isn't a priority. "To 
hell with efficiency, effectiveness is all I care about," a 
finger-wagging superior once told me in Iraq. But keeping our bases and 
units supplied with fuel endangers not just the lives of many soldiers 
manning the tanker convoys, it also drains $24 billion a year from the 
Pentagon budget. The solution: a Defense Department policy requiring all 
structures in the combat zone be energy-efficient.


...

For the entire column, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/opinion/13anderson.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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