War and Ecology
Modern Armaments - Safe for Earth?
Sep 30, 2009 Paula Marie Deubel
"For a mighty nation like us to be carrying on a war with a few struggling nomads, under such circumstances, is a spectacle most humiliating, an injustice unparalleled, a national crime most revolting in nature, that must, sooner or later,bring down upon us or our posterity the judgment of heaven." John "Black Whispers" Sanborn penned these lines regarding the slaughter of Native American Indians over a century ago; today the content of these words still well describes the aggression and dominance of the United States against weaker enemy nations.
History of Exploitation
As the plundering of aboriginal lands by early Europeans contributed to the destruction of ecosystems, so, too, does modern war devastate the environment of other lands today (only more quickly); there are parts of bombed-out Iraq where the grass will never grow again.
In past centuries, American Indians were exploited for their land just as Arabs are exploited for oil in this century. In certain important ways today, the Indian represents the contemporary soul of the Arabian, pitted against a brutal and unstoppable force. The American Indian, back then, thought he was fighting only for his land - little did he know he was fighting for his culture and entire soul.The "Savage" was demonized and became an object of genocide, fought wherever he was found.
Today, very little has changed, except for the technology of man's super weapons. Again, earth's environment is at peril. Mankind's spiritual downfall is a gaudy triumph of greed and materialism over nature.
War and Climate Change
In Against the Fires of Hell, author T.M. Hawley writes it is not implausible to believe the 1991 Persian Gulf War was a weather-alternating agent, adding that smoke from the burning oil fields definitely had characteristics of being a possible weather modifier.
Many top international scientists, including late Carl Sagan, warned in 1991 that global temperature changes could be effected by the giant smoke cloud over Kuwait and effect the Monsoon season in India and South East Asia, influencing temperatures as far as the USA.
Despite these warnings and mounting evidence, in 1991, the U.S. Department of Energy (in yet another act of censorship of that time) forbade its scientist to discuss its research with the media.
Hawley further contends the Persian Gulf War was the most "terrifying air pollution catastrophe in history" up to that time, comparing the ecological damage from oil spills to a nuclear plant explosion. Species of birds disappeared from Iraq during the Gulf War and according to Greenpeace most of the bays lining Saudi Arabia's north coast "had no sign of surviving marine life."
Effects of War on Ecology Ignored
The ecological damage from the burning oil fields is only a part of the total disaster. Completely ignored are effects of the 88,000 tons of bombs that rained on our planet during the worst bombing attack of any time prior to 1991 (including both World Wars) in the entire history of man.
"What is not so obvious," writes former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, "is how pervasively the environmental damage the [Gulf] war caused will injure and shorten people's lives around the globe."
Global warming is commonly reported by the scientific community as caused by carbon dioxide and methane pollutants, yet no reports are ever widely proclaimed or published regarding the environmental effects of war, or the toxicity of new weaponry. This should be considered irresponsible and totally unacceptable to society, since human health depends on such vital knowledge.
Just how much damage does intense bombing in one area of the world effect the rest of the planet? Why is this subject never avidly questioned or reported? Bombs are tested for their destructive efficiency, but are they tested for human health or environmental safety (which are ultimately the same thing).
War may Explain the Previously Hidden
War often returns to haunt history many years later, because history is the final moral judge; with today's hi-tech weaponry, however, the specter may return faster in the form of unexplained illnesses or hidden and fatal environmental damages.
Today no one should feel immune from the effects of modern warfare, no matter how far from the battlefield; after all, earth evolves every twenty-four hours and where the lethal bombs fell yesterday, we are breathing today.
Nature or War?
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