ABBY MARTIN: CONFRONTING EMPIRE

Abby Martin says that the climate crisis cannot be overcome without confronting the U.S. military. Abby is touring Australia in July, at a time when both Australia and New Zealand are being drawn deeper into U.S. military strategy.

 

ABBY MARTIN'S new documentary Earth’s Greatest Enemy is a blistering, meticulously researched indictment of the United States military as the planet’s most destructive institutional polluter. At a time when governments and corporations loudly proclaim their climate credentials, Martin’s film cuts through the green-washed noise with a simple, devastating thesis: you cannot solve the climate crisis without confronting the world’s largest war machine.

The film, produced through Abby's independent project The Empire Files, took more than five years to complete. It follows Martin across military bases, weapons expos, frontline communities, and the vast Pacific theatre where the U.S. conducts many of its most environmentally catastrophic operations. What emerges is a portrait of an institution whose ecological footprint dwarfs that of most nations. The Pentagon consumes more oil than any other institution on Earth, emits more greenhouse gases than 150 countries, and leaves behind a toxic trail of contamination from Okinawa to Hawai‘i to the deserts of the American Southwest.

Martin has been blunt about the scale of the crisis. “When you combine all of this,” she said in an interview, “it is completely undeniable that this force that is upheld by extreme violence is the greatest threat to all living things on Earth.” Her film backs that claim with evidence: poisoned aquifers, depleted uranium, jet fuel leaks, PFAS contamination, scorched landscapes, and the carbon footprint of endless war. One of the film’s most striking comparisons comes when Martin notes that a single refuelling flight of a Boeing KC-135 tanker burns more fuel in a few hours than an average American driver uses in decades. “The U.S. flies more than 600 of these tankers,” she says, letting the scale speak for itself.

But Earth’s Greatest Enemy is not just a catalogue of environmental crimes. It is a political argument. Martin insists that militarism is not an unfortunate side-issue in the climate debate but its central, unspoken pillar. The U.S. military exists to secure fossil fuel supply chains, enforce geopolitical dominance, and protect the corporate order that profits from extraction. “You have to look at the military as the institution that’s actually keeping the fossil fuel infrastructure in place through brutality and violence,” she says. The film makes clear that the climate crisis is not simply a matter of emissions; it is a matter of empire.

Martin’s own trajectory as a journalist has prepared her for this confrontation. Born in California in 1984, she first gained prominence as the host of Breaking the Set where she became known for her fierce critiques of U.S. foreign policy. After leaving cable television, she founded The Empire Files, an independent media project dedicated to exposing the human and environmental costs of U.S. power. Her 2019 documentary Gaza Fights for Freedom established her as a filmmaker capable of combining investigative depth with moral clarity. Earth’s Greatest Enemy expands that scope to a planetary level, tracing the ecological consequences of empire across continents and oceans.

Although Martin has no formal biographical ties to New Zealand, her work resonates strongly here. New Zealand’s nuclear-free identity, its history of anti-militarist activism, and its position within the Five Eyes intelligence alliance all intersect with the themes of the film. The Pacific is central to Earth’s Greatest Enemy and New Zealand is a Pacific nation. The RIMPAC war games — a major focus of the documentary — involve Pacific states and take place in waters that carry deep cultural and ecological significance for the region. For New Zealanders concerned about militarisation in the Pacific, the environmental legacy of foreign bases, or the country’s strategic alignment with the United States, Martin’s film lands with particular force.

The documentary is also arriving at a moment when Australia and New Zealand are being drawn deeper into U.S. military strategy through AUKUS and expanding base access agreements. Martin’s argument — that militarism is the missing piece of the climate conversation — challenges the political consensus in both countries. It asks whether nations that claim climate leadership can continue to support the world’s largest polluter.

Martin will tour Australia in July 2026 to screen Earth’s Greatest Enemy and speak directly with audiences. The tour includes events in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Wollongong, and Sydney, hosted by the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network and the Progressive International Pacific. Each stop will feature a screening and a discussion with Martin about the film’s findings, the environmental cost of U.S. militarism, and the growing movement demanding demilitarisation as a climate imperative. For many Australians — and for New Zealanders watching closely from across the Tasman — the tour offers a rare opportunity to engage with one of the most uncompromising voices in contemporary anti-imperialist journalism.

Earth’s Greatest Enemy is not a comforting film. It does not offer easy solutions or technocratic fixes. Instead, it demands a reckoning with the structures of power driving ecological collapse. Martin’s message is stark: the climate crisis cannot be solved without confronting the U.S. military. The world’s most powerful institution is also its most destructive environmental force, and any movement serious about planetary survival must be willing to name that truth.