The US military is the world’s largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels—and one of the largest sources of environmental destruction. Yet its role in the climate crisis is rarely part of mainstream climate or environmental justice conversations. In this episode of A People’s Climate, host Shilpi Chhotray talks with independent journalist and documentary filmmaker Abby Martin about why meaningful climate action must confront militarism.

As military spending rises and wars continue to devastate communities and ecosystems, the connections between war, fossil fuels, and environmental destruction are becoming harder to ignore. Martin traces how military power has shaped the climate crisis, from the toxic legacy of US military bases to the destruction of land and water in Hawaiʻi and the environmental costs of modern warfare. She and Shilpi also explore why climate and anti-war movements have so often operated separately—and what it could look like to build a broader movement capable of confronting both systems.

• War & fossil fuels: How fossil fuel extraction, US military power, and global war are deeply intertwined.
• The environmental cost of war: The carbon emissions, toxic rubble, contaminated soil and water, and ecosystem destruction left behind by modern warfare.
• Military pollution: The toxic waste and contamination generated by US military bases, including the devastating legacy of Camp Lejeune.
• Hawaiʻi & militarism: How colonization and militarization have turned Hawaiʻi into a military playground, with lasting impacts on Indigenous land, water, and communities—including the Red Hill fuel spill.
• RIMPAC: What Abby Martin witnessed at the world’s largest international maritime military exercise—and its impact on Hawaiʻi’s land and ocean ecosystems.
• War & wildlife: How military sonar, weapons testing, and munitions damage marine life and leave pollution that can persist for generations.
• Connecting movements: Why climate and anti-war movements need to break out of their silos to confront the systems driving both crises.
• Building power: How divestment, grassroots organizing, labor action, and community resistance can challenge militarism and corporate power.

• Earth’s Greatest Enemy
• The Empire Files
• Water Protectors Rise Up: Native Hawaiian resistance in the wake of the Red Hill disaster
• Collateral of the Permanent War: How ‘national security’ made communities and ecosystems disposable

Presented by Counterstream Media and The Nation

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Host: Shilpi Chhotray

Executive Producer: Mindy Ramaker

Engineer: Ameeta Ganatra

Project Manager: Asia Simms Abby Martin

Abby Martin is an investigative journalist, filmmaker, and founder of The Empire Files, an independent video series exposing US imperialism and its global consequences. She directed the widely acclaimed Gaza Fights for Freedom (2019) and Earth’s Greatest Enemy (2026), a groundbreaking investigation into the US military’s devastating environmental footprint and its role in the global climate crisis. Her uncompromising style has made her a standard-bearer of advocacy journalism and one of the most prominent figures in alternative media.

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