(Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Corner - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

For two months now, the Trump Administration has been rounding out its formidable resume of crimes against humanity by carrying out a series of extrajudicial killings against what it claims to be Venezuelan drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea. For all the scant evidence it’s provided as to the veracity of these claims, it appears every bit as likely that at least some of those vessels targeted have in fact been civilian fishing boats – though to be clear, this would still be a series of brazen war crimes in either case.

Whatever the thinly veiled pretense for our saber-rattling with Venezuela, the true cause of our longstanding hostilities couldn’t be more obvious. America’s ruling class would love nothing more than to get its cloven hooves on Venezuela’s 300 billion barrels of oil, the largest proven oil reserves in the world, with an estimated value well into the tens of trillions of dollars.

The deranged and deliberately obfuscated confluence of American militarism, capital, and environmental annihilation of the sort fully on display in these attacks is precisely the subject of the latest feature length documentary from journalist Abby Martin, “Earth’s Greatest Enemy.”

Martin, working alongside her husband and producer Mike Prysner, an Iraq War veteran turned critic of the U.S. military, hosts the independent web series The Empire Files, which sets out to expose the destructive machinations of American imperialism. It was the birth of their two children that compelled Martin and Prysner to begin interrogating the military’s outsized role in fueling the destruction of our planet – our military is the single largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases in the world – and it’s through this lens that the film sets out to explore the tentacular reach of American empire and its global destruction of the biosphere.

I want to be upfront about the fact that I am in no way qualified to offer an impartial review of this film. From its first trailer, expressing the intent to expose the “monster” at the “center of the struggle to save the planet,” I knew that this was a project I wanted to support. After reaching out to Abby and Mike about making a donation to the film’s crowdfunding campaign, I was brought onboard to create an animated segment that plays during the film’s closing credits, depicting the tentacled beast of the American military machine as it ravages the planet.

Having played this small role in the film’s production, I had the wonderful privilege of attending the Los Angeles premiere of “Earth’s Greatest Enemy” back in October. My obvious biases notwithstanding, I cannot recommend this documentary highly enough to anyone who cares about the future of life on our planet – which should, of course, include everyone.

This sprawling film covers a broad range of topics, from the environmental devastation of our more than 750 military bases worldwide, to the toxic health effects of our reckless foreign invasions in places like Iraq and Vietnam. But among the film’s most shocking achievements is revealing the seemingly utter obliviousness of those most responsible for the desecration of our planet.

There’s one scene from the film in which Martin confronts former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the COP26 climate conference in 2021.

“Speaker Pelosi, you just presided over a large increase in the Pentagon budget- this Pentagon budget is already massive. The Pentagon is a larger polluter than 140 countries combined. How can we seriously talk about net zero, if there is this bipartisan consensus to constantly expand this large contributor to climate change, which is exempt from these conferences?”

“National security advisors all tell us that the climate crisis is a national security matter,” Pelosi weakly responds. “It is a national security issue because of all of the conditions that the climate crisis produces… They are cause for migration, conflict over habitat and resources, and again a security challenge globally…”

The circuitous logic on display here is insane. The Pentagon openly admits that climate change is a national security threat, yet despite being the number one contributor to that very problem, it somehow justifies its neverending, cancerous expansion by presenting itself as a necessary key to solving it. This is akin to a firefighter attempting to hose down a burning building from a hydrant filled with gasoline, and offers a chilling glimpse at how our ruling class intends to address the mass displacement and human suffering of the impending crisis almost exclusively through the use of force.

On the afternoon of the film’s L.A. premiere, I decided to embark on a three hour whale watching tour I’d discovered in Long Beach the previous day. This proved to be one of the most unforgettable experiences of my trip, as while I unfortunately didn’t catch a glimpse of any whales, what I did get to see in spades were dolphins– hundreds and hundreds of them.

I found myself moved to tears by these swarms of gorgeous creatures as they leapt playfully through the water, some of them nursing mothers with calves by their sides, their high pitched vocalizations clearly audible as they swam around on all sides of our boat. The indescribable experience of finding myself at the center of this beautiful natural wonder filled me with an intense clarity of purpose, reminding me that this is what we’re fighting for when we’re fighting for the Earth.

Later that evening, I would watch in horrified awe from the front of the Beverly Hills Fine Arts Theater as Abby Martin discussed incidental marine mammal takes on the big screen- these being the permissible number of marine mammals that are allowed to be injured or killed through military activities, especially the lethal sonar and training exercises of the U.S. Navy. The numbers shown onscreen for this struck me as astronomical, and when I briefly spoke with Abby after the film about how this specific segment had impacted me given my experience earlier that day, she revealed that they’d actually cut an even more shocking piece of information from this part of the film, believing it was too mind-boggling to be explained concisely to audiences.

Essentially, (assuming my interpretation of her words was accurate,) because the Navy’s dolphin takes are calculated by the number of permissibly impacted animals per pod, the total number of dolphins they’re allowed to kill technically exceeds the entire global dolphin population.

Just as the fossil fuel industry calculates its future profits based on reserves that it fully knows it cannot possibly harness without pushing Earth beyond its climatic breaking point, and just as our military possesses enough nuclear bombs to proverbially destroy the world a hundred times over, there is no way that these systems of mass death can continue operating unchecked, gorging themselves on hypothetical excesses of destruction that will prove lethal to all living beings should they ever have the chance to be fully realized.

The ultimate goal of Earth’s Greatest Enemy is to unify and galvanize the climate and antiwar movements against the relentless forward march of this omnicidal machinery. It should be our greatest moral imperative to ensure that this goal is met.

The film will be having its Ohio premiere at Cincinnati World Cinema on December 4th, with additional Midwest dates being added early next year. More information can be found at earthsgreatestenemy.com. Please do not miss this absolute must-see of a film!

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Aaron Dunbar is a member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.