VA Veteran Support of Climate Change Action
by Aries Keck
ARLINGTON, Va. – Veterans and national security experts have created ‘Operation Free’ – an organization designed to push the country toward developing renewable energy sources and taking bold, fast action on climate change. Virginian Terron Simms is an Iraqi combat veteran who served in 2003 and 2004; he believes this country’s reliance on imported oil undermines national security.
“For decades our leaders have formulated policies with respect to other countries so that we have to act in order to maintain our regular access to crude oil.”
Simms says that the clean-energy policies on increasing wind and solar power which are contained in the climate change bill now before Congress will result in less reliance on oil, and thus make America stronger and more independent. That bill has passed the U.S. House; a Senate version is expected later this month.
Simms says soldiers like himself have a first-hand view of the connections among climate change, fossil fuels and American foreign policy.
“We veterans, especially those of us who are actually combat veterans, have had to feel the brunt and execute policies, and it causes you to ask what the real motives are, and the simple question as to why.”
