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What I Saw When I Stopped Pretending
I invite you to sit with me in this feeling of brokenness, and to step outside of the American delusion of war making and "peace through strength"—the normalization of coercion and dominance.
08 Jul, 2026
Some of the most peaceful moments of my life were spent standing on the deck of a US Navy aircraft carrier just before dawn. It feels like looking over the entire ocean, into endless blue water. An aircraft carrier is massive—like a floating city on the sea—and yet you can still feel the gentle rocking from the ocean's waves through the soles of your feet. When you breathe into this moment—the salty air filling your lungs—you're reminded of how incredibly small you are in the grand scheme of things. The realization causes a sort of lightness and fluttering within the chest, an overwhelming sense of gratitude for all that you cannot understand.
Then the day begins. The launch of the first F/A-18 fighter jet tears a sonic hole through the silent morning. Naval airmen run around the deck, bracing themselves and clutching their headsets to evade the thundering sound. The whole ship shakes as it launches jet after jet, white and gray trails marking their courses across the serene blue sky. Fuel and oil cover the hands and faces of mechanics working throughout the day and into the night to make sure the jets keep coming and going, launch after launch. There is not enough ocean breeze to prevent the sweat that stains our coveralls. The mixture of stenches—salt, oil, sweat—sticks to the hair inside your nostrils. It is the same the next day and the next. Preparation for war—for terror—is a never-ending, completely mundane affair. We eat our oatmeal, we don our coveralls, we load the jets, we drop the bombs, we do it all again.
I currently work for the antiwar organization CODEPINK, but long before that, I was an enlisted member of the US Navy. My last job in the Navy was easy compared with others. I was the operations specialist for a squadron of fighter pilots. I worked with the commissioned officers, pilots whom I affectionately called "the frat boys of the Navy." They were young, zealous, mostly white men hyped about their jobs. I mean, they got to fly ultrafast planes and practice dropping bombs all day. Isn't this the American boy's dream? I sat in their lounge every day, making sure everything was documented and accounted for to get them launching and landing their jets with enough fuel, with the right parachutes, and at the right times.
I joined the military for the same reasons many young people do. My parents couldn't afford to send me to college. I was desperate to get out of the house, stuck in a place whose only immediate opportunities were casinos and hospitality work, and burdened with a brain and heart that were very eager to prove something. Along came Polly—or, in my case, a Navy recruiter. Travel? Free college? Free basic housing? A mission bigger than myself?! I thought about it for half a second before I signed up.
When I told the pilots about my studies and my evolving love of the sea, they laughed, saying, "Well, don't pay attention to how much fuel we dump in the ocean."
American war making is in the mundane. I'll say it again and again. Most of us are mere assembly workers in a war-making factory, so disconnected are we in this 21st-century age of war. Most of us are kept far away from the bloody realities of our jobs. At the end of the day, my job was to push paper. I saw a copy machine more than I did a gun. I don't have valiant stories of combating ISIS. I never leapt onto a grenade to save my comrades. And yet, my spirit and conscience would not let me get away with this blissful ignorance, this American-made delusion, for long.
My saving grace—and the start of my awakening—was the fact that I was a loner. I had a unique job; no one else did what I did. I was kept away from my peers and didn't care to belong. On the weekends, when many Naval airmen would go out partying, drinking, and building all that collective trauma and camaraderie together, I'd drive four hours from the coast of Virginia to its forest interior. I was always looking for a good hike, a mountain to climb, a waterfall to swim in. In my solitude, I felt an ancestral sense of connection to the land and stars. I could feel love in the light glow of the sun that somehow still reached me between the dense forest trees. Swimming at the base of a waterfall felt like a gentle cleansing—a return to the womb of the Earth herself. There was an innate sense of safety that would wash over me as I lay under the night sky, waiting for asteroids to streak across the stars and rain down on me.
I fell deeply in love. I started going to school while still on active duty. I decided to study Environmental Science. When I told the pilots about my studies and my evolving love of the sea, they laughed, saying, "Well, don't pay attention to how much fuel we dump in the ocean."
That statement stayed with me. It followed me onto that deck of the aircraft carrier, lingering with me on those quiet mornings when I looked over the sea. What kind of world was I actually building? What kind of destruction could I possibly be contributing to?
They say that if you're lucky, you can see dolphins swimming, leaping in the waves close to the ships. I was never blessed with such a sight. But I began to think about that fuel, clogging their blowholes, poisoning their lungs. I began to think about the places where we dropped boots and bullets and bombs. I thought of the people whom I deemed enemies and yet knew nothing about. Do they not deserve to enjoy the refreshing peace of a waterfall too? Do their lungs know the crisp, clean air of a mountain walk, away from bullets and the exhaust of aircraft engines? Something broke within me then—something irreparable. And I could no longer pretend to belong.
I don't think I am the only person feeling this way. And those who do, I invite you to sit with me in this feeling of brokenness, and to step outside of the American delusion of war making and "peace through strength"—the normalization of coercion and dominance. This is an invitation to see what you see, to let it wash over your conscience and compel you to change course. Yes, it is frightening to grapple with the truth, but to ignore it guarantees our collective death, both in spirit and in the material world.
I have seen nothing that so succinctly explains and connects the US military's active demolition of people with the destruction of the environment until I watched Abby Martin’s 2025 documentary film, Earth's Greatest Enemy. It offers thorough, undeniable evidence that our country’s ongoing military campaigns and occupations are destroying entire communities and ecosystems. To me, this film encapsulates both a sense of grief and of hope: grief over the horror that US militarism has inflicted upon us and the planet, and hope, embodied in the people who continue defending their homelands, waterways, and communities against the seemingly insurmountable force that is the US military. Earth’s Greatest Enemy is available now on major streaming platforms. I invite you to watch the film, to invite friends to watch the film, and then tell me what you saw, tell me what you felt.
In every person, there is a soldier or warrior spirit, long waiting for a direction worth fighting for. This Earth is a place worth protecting, and in its people is a common humanity worth putting your body on the line for.
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Hey Trump, Our Ocean Isn't for Sale
We should be spending America's 250th anniversary lifting up our shared natural and cultural heritage. Instead, the Trump administration is spending this consequential year by selling out nature on land and sea.
02 Jul, 2026
As the United States approaches its 250th year as a nation, the festivities are widespread in DC. But even as Americans prepare to celebrate, the Trump administration is quietly working to expose some of our most treasured ocean places to harmful activities like mining, drilling, and industrial fishing.
We should be spending this anniversary lifting up our shared natural and cultural heritage. Instead, the Trump administration is spending this consequential year trashing the very idea of shared heritage by erasing history and selling out nature on land and sea. While there has been extensive coverage about how this erasure is playing out on land, the administration is also aggressively selling out our ocean heritage.
Having worked in the Biden administration and now both leading national conservation coalitions, we hear from communities across the country every day, who are trying to protect the ocean and coasts they love and depend on.
And what we hear is that communities don’t like what they are seeing from the Trump administration. They don’t want to be cut off from their own ocean backyards by corporate pollution. They don’t want dirty and destructive industry off their coasts. And they especially don’t want the Trump administration selling off public lands and waters to the highest bidder.
All of us who love the ocean have a chance now to be a part of the alliance to save its future.
In the Pacific Ocean, expedited permits for deep-sea mining make it easier to sell off the right to mine around the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. Thousands of people in these US territories have made it clear that they oppose these mining ventures because these companies use unproven technology that jeopardizes their livelihoods. Our coalitions have engaged tens of thousands of people voicing their opposition, yet the administration has continued the process of selling off the seafloor to mining companies with little benefit to the communities that bear the risks.
The expansion of offshore oil and gas leases, which would open 34 new sales in waters off the coast of Alaska, California, and Florida, would also benefit just a handful of fossil fuel companies. In one fell swoop, they would sell out the climate; introduce the constant possible threat of an oil spill; and further threaten local fishing, recreation, and subsistence.
Reopening protected waters to industrial fishing is the same short-sighted story. Like our national parks on land, marine national monuments are protected as special places we safeguard for our children and grandchildren to enjoy. They are home to spectacular wildlife and important cultural heritage and history. However, Trump’s executive orders will lead to all of these monuments opening to industrial fishing—the largest rollback of protected areas in US history—endangering these special places and the diverse creatures therein.
Meanwhile, the federal workforce focused on public lands and waters has been decimated. If they weren’t fired through budget-slashing with the planning and accuracy of a 14-year-old playing laser tag, they quit to avoid carrying out unconscionable actions. Many of the staff who had relationships with communities are no longer in government service, replaced with corporate insiders.
These actions are as unpopular as they are destructive. Loving the ocean is as unique and universal as the American experience, and we relate to it in countless ways for sustenance, livelihoods, spiritual renewal, recreation, and more: the thrill of catching a fish for dinner, the magic of watching a whale breach, the way that just the smell of salty water can put us in a better mood. From the lush mangrove forests of the Florida Keys, to vibrant coral reefs of the central Pacific, to the rocky coastlines of New England, or the enchanting tidepools of the West Coast, there’s no reason to let the administration run roughshod over these simple, profound pleasures.
Collectively, we can push back on the Trump administration’s attack on the ocean. We’ve seen this administration abandon projects before, including the DOGE program. All of us who love the ocean have a chance now to be a part of the alliance to save its future.
For the last 250 years, past generations fought to protect our coasts and waters.
Now, it’s up to us to keep that tradition alive.
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'Beginning of a New Phase': Hottest June Ever Recorded for World's Oceans
"With ocean temperatures at these levels and El Niño on the horizon, we are likely to see more temperature records fall in the coming months."
01 Jul, 2026
A new report released Wednesday shows that surface temperatures of the world's oceans hit a record for June, sparking fresh warnings of grave “consequences for weather patterns, global climate and marine ecosystems” across the globe.
The analysis by the European Union’s Copernicus Marine Service, and confirmed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), finds that “record global sea surface temperatures” of 21.0° Celsius (69.8° Fahrenheit) in June of 2026 beat the previous record in the same month broken in 2023 and again in 2024.
C3S director Carlo Buontempo warned that the "current conditions" of the oceans "could indicate the beginning of a new phase, leading, once more, to uncharted territory."
"With ocean temperatures at these levels and El Niño on the horizon, we are likely to see more temperature records fall in the coming months," Buontempo warned. "That Copernicus Marine data reaches the same conclusion through independent methods speaks to the strength of European science—and to why open, robust data matters now more than ever.”
According to a statement from Copernicus, warmer oceans have wide-ranging impacts on natural systems and human infrastructure, noting that "higher ocean temperatures keep the atmosphere warm for longer, provide extra energy to storms and increase evaporation, thus enhancing the potential for extreme precipitation and flooding. Ocean warming also contributes to sea level rise and ice melt, and stresses marine ecosystems."
With the onset of a new El Niño cycle—which tends to trigger more pronounced weather events worldwide—the continued increase of ocean temperatures is a serious concern of scientists.
Wednesday's report on ocean temperatures also arrives as record-breaking heat waves hit both Europe and North America, offering more evidence of the perils of an ever-hotter world that is being pushed to the brink by the burning of fossil fuels and the failure of governments worldwide to finally act against the fossil fuel industry that is driving the crisis.
Surging ocean surface temperatures are "not unexpected,” Michael Meredith, an ocean scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, told CNN in response to the Copernicus report. “But the pace of warming we are now seeing is alarming.”
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