Producer Mike Prysner is an Iraq War veteran turned peace activist. His latest film, “Earth's Greatest Enemy,” highlights the environmental consequences of war, as well as the legacy of living with a military with a budget that reached $1 trillion.
“If we're going to have this massive military, people should be aware of the cost to human health and the health of the planet, and really the long term survival of our species,” Pryser said.
He was with the 10th Mountain Division during the opening days of the Iraq War in 2003, where he saw a man shot at a checkpoint by a U.S. officer.
“I started to put myself in the shoes of those people and thinking what I would be doing if people were doing this to my country, to my family,” he said.
Produced with his wife, journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin, “Earth's Greatest Enemy” goes down the list of environmental issues the military has had to answer for over the last two decades, from the impact of live fire exercises on marine mammals in the Pacific and base expansion in Okinawa, Japan, to water contamination at Camp Lejeune, the legacy of heavy metals around former U.S. bases in Iraq and the fuel leak at Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in Hawaii.
“There just started to be so many other angles, from contamination from toxins dumped by the military to destruction of habitats where hundreds of endangered species live,” Pryser said.
The documentary touches on PFAS contamination from firefighting foam, which impacts the groundwater at bases around the country, including in Hampton Roads.
“One of the hidden struggles in this is communities that fight for cleanups that don't happen. And when there are cleanups, when the EPA does designate a military site, it doesn't always go,” he said.
Small steps, like creating better fuel efficiency for military vehicles, have been rolled back under the Trump administration, which has declared climate change a hoax and further complicated the environmental landscape, Pryser said.
“Earth’s Greatest Enemy” is showing Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Naro Expanded Cinema in Norfolk.
