NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/alt/activism/18889

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From: ACTIV-L via Jym Dyer <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.environment
Subject: EDITORIAL: The U.S. Military's War on the Environment
Followup-To: alt.activism.d,talk.environment
Date: 17 Nov 1992 01:54:04 GMT
Organization: The Naughty Peahen Party Line
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[From EcoNet wri.news Conference]
[Also Posted to misc.activism.progressive (by Somebody Else)]

================================================================
=> From: Foreign Bases Project <[e-mail]>
=> Subject: THE [MILITARY'S] WAR ON ENVIRONMENT

THE MILITARY'S WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT
BY JOHN M. MILLER

     THAT humans make war on the environment is a widely used
metaphor, which becomes literally true when nations make war on
each other.  From Vietnam to Central America and Afghanistan to
the Persian Gulf, warfare has had grave ecological consequences
that affect not only the environment, but the health and
security of the people who depend on it.  And the negative
impact of the world's armies on the environment neither begins
nor ends with a shooting war.  Every day militaries use up
non-renewable resources, pollute water sources, and contribute
to ozone depletion.

     Images from the Gulf War of the smoke-darkened Kuwaiti
desert with oil wells burning out of control was a stark
reminder of the environmental damage of war.  Ongoing
revelations of radioactive pollution from nuclear weapons sites
in the United States and the former Soviet Union point to the
costs of peacetime military activity.  More recently communities
are becoming aware of the environmental impacts of military
bases and the numerous toxic chemicals they use.  All of these
revelations have helped lift the veil from the myriad of ways
that militaries wage war on the environment (and all of us),
even when they are not waging war on each other.

     The recent Gulf War is a vivid case study in the damage
that war can cause the environment.  While the hundreds of oil
fires have been extinguished, oil lakes still cover the Kuwaiti
desert.  Oil still contaminates the Gulf and little has been
done to clean the hundreds of miles of coastline.  Studies to
determine the full extent of the damage to important and fragile
ecosystems critical to a range of animal and plant species have
only begun.  Heavy military vehicles and military fortifications
have dug up and packed down the deserts of the region that,
lacking water, will take years to recover.  A year and half
after the end of the war little is known about the full extent
of environmental damage caused by the bombing of Iraq's nuclear
and chemical weapons facilities and petrochemical and other
industrial sites.  The bombing of Iraq's electrical system
caused widespread disruption of sewage and other critical
systems polluting water supplies and spreading disease.
Throughout the developing world, immigrant workers in the
Persian Gulf fled home as Gulf War refugees increasing stress on
rural ecosystems and urban areas.

RESOURCE USE

     Like the Gulf War, many wars are about access to resources.
Michael Renner of Worldwatch Institute estimates that the worlds
armies use as much energy as the economy of Japan, about six
percent of total use worldwide.  An F-16 fighter burns more
fuel in an hour than the average U.S. car does in one year.
Militaries account for nine percent of the iron and steel
consumed each year.  They also use a large proportion of such
minerals as beryllium, cobalt, and titanium. In a self-
perpetuating cycle, nations create armies to gain access to
resources that their armies must consume in order to function.

     Militaries have a seemingly insatiable appetite for land to
train on.  This need has risen steadily as armies have grown
larger and weapons have become more technologically advanced.
Modern planes can fly faster and further.  Modern artillery can
shoot farther.  Up to one percent of land worldwide is directly
used by militaries.  Every year additional land is damaged or
made unsuitable for civilian use.  Unbearably loud noises from
overflights by jets can cause health and other problems for
residents and wildlife below training areas. In recent years
protests against low-flying jets in Europe and across the United
States are beginning to curb the impunity with which western air
forces disturb those below.

     Large tracts of land are also destroyed during war.
Operation Ranch Hand sprayed 18 million gallons of herbicides
on more than six million acres in Vietnam and a lesser area in
Laos and Cambodia.  That land is only beginning to recover.
Track marks can still be seen in the deserts of North Africa,
reminders of the massive tank battles of World War II.

     One of the longest lived legacies from many wars is the
thousands of rounds of unexploded bombs and mines left over from
many wars.  These bombs can maim and kill and unless thoroughly
cleared they make use of the land dangerous for decades.
German mustard gas shells, lobbed during World War I, are still
occasionally uncovered.  Unexploded ordnance is still a major
problem in Vietnam, sending numerous children and farmers to
the hospital 17 years after the war.  Mineclearing is a big and
dangerous business now, with companies vying for contracts to
remove mines in Angola, Kuwait, and Cambodia.

Toxic Chemicals & Hazardous Waste

     While negotiations on a treaty to ban the possession of
chemical weapons recently ended, militaries wage chemical
warfare daily on their own citizens by using some of the most
lethal chemicals known -- not to wage war but to prepare for it.
Solvents, PCBs, pesticides, heavy metals, alkalies, propellants
and explosives then need to be disposed of safely.  According to
the Pentagons Defense Environmental Restoration Program, 17,482
toxic hot spots have been found at the 1,855 domestic
installations.  (The U.S. does not provide figures for its
overseas military bases.)  A toxic hot spot is a place where
hazardous waste contamination poses a potential threat.  Areas
around many conventional and nuclear production facilities are
also contaminated.  The costs of cleaning up these sites are
astronomical and estimates vary widely, anywhere from $50
billion to $200 billion.

     As a number of militaries begin post-Cold War reductions,
the need to isolate and clean up chemical pollutants will delay
alternative uses at many military bases.  Also delayed will be
the economic recovery of communities around the bases, adding
to pressure to leave bases open or conduct shoddy clean ups.

     There is every reason to believe that contamination at the
bases of other militaries is as bad or worse.  Germany recently
put former Soviet soldiers awaiting repatriation to Russia to
work locating dumps created in East Germany.  No oversight from
host governments and poor record-keeping or a lack of any
records mean that an unknown number of toxic time bombs are
scattered throughout eastern Europe.

     The disposal of chemical weapons poses a number of special
environmental hazards. After World War II, stocks of chemical
weapons were haphazardly dumped in several ocean areas.  Now the
U.S. and Russia have adopted incineration as the preferred
disposal method, ignoring and inadequately researching safer
alternatives.  The U.S. moved chemical weapons from Okinawa and
Germany to Johnston Island in the Pacific in 1972 and 1990.
Pacific Islanders now fear that the U.S. will incinerate its
entire stockpile of chemical weapons at Johnston, ignoring their
wishes and well-being.

Nuclear  Contamination

     Toxic and nuclear contamination from nuclear weapons
production and testing have created life-threatening conditions
in many parts of the world.  Nuclear tests have spread deadly
radioactive isotopes worldwide.  Contamination from test sites,
military nuclear reactors, warhead assembly plants, and
haphazardly created waste sites is migrating into water supplies
and the air, threatening the communities and ecosystems around
them.  Safe ways to clean up and dispose of millions of tons of
radioactive waste produced by uranium mining, weapons
production, and now, the dismantling of nuclear warheads remain
elusive.  Contamination at U.S. nuclear weapons facilities alone
may cost $200-$300 billion to clean up over the next 30 years.
Nuclear hot spots in the South Pacific, U.S., former USSR, China
and elsewhere will threaten the health of many for years to
come.

     Indigenous peoples have especially suffered from the
nuclear arms race.  Their lands and waters in North America,
the Pacific, the former USSR, Australia, and elsewhere have
been irradiated by nuclear tests by the major nuclear powers.
It is still not safe for Marshall Islanders to reinhabit their
original islands.  In Australia, aborigines received little or
no warning before British tests irradiated them in the 1950s.

     Above ground nuclear testing contaminated the atmosphere,
but many underground nuclear tests leak radiation as well.
Other military activities are affecting the atmosphere as well.
The military is responsible for over two-thirds of U.S. use of
the ozone-depleting chemical CFC-113.  While the Pentagon is
moving away from CFC use, the high cost of changing military
specifications is stalling the conversion to safer chemicals in
the U.S. and abroad, because many other nations follow the U.S.
lead when it comes to technical requirements in weapons
production.  Exhaust from solid-fuelled rockets and missiles
injects large amounts of ozone harming hydrochloric acid
directly into the upper atmosphere.

National Security

     Militaries citing "national security" have hidden their
environmental crimes behind a veil of secrecy.  In many nations,
the military is often exempt from environmental rules and
regulations either by law or by custom.  In recent years,
Congress and grassroots protest have increasingly brought
military activities under the environmental laws and regulations
that apply to others, but the Pentagon and Department of Energy
continue to resist efforts to treat them like any other
polluter.  And most environmental laws contain loopholes that
allow the president to cite a national emergency to exempt the
military.

     Military harm to the environment is not confined to its
direct impacts.  Hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide are
spent preparing for war.  Military spending continues to consume
monetary, human and other resources short-changing environmental
protection, development and other social needs.  Billions must
now be spent cleaning up military messes.

     Many politically involved militaries protect, promote, and
often directly benefit from environmentally destructive projects
and activities.  They are used to suppress opposition to harmful
projects, stifling environmental debate.  The wholesale
destruction of the Amazon began under the military dictatorship
in Brazil.  Burma's military is cutting down its teak forests,
trading the wood for arms and cash to support its dictatorship.
In the name of anti-communism the Philippine army suppressed
dissent against environmentally destructive forestry,
hydroelectric and other projects during and after the Marcos
dictatorship.

New Image

     Many of the worlds militaries, seeing which way the public
opinion winds are blowing, are working to improve their
environmental practice and image.  Here in the United States,
the Pentagon regularly proclaims this or that environmental
innovation.  Several years ago, the Senate passed the Strategic
Environmental Initiative (SEI), Senator Sam Nunn's (D-GA)
proposal to fund the military to release environmental data and
do environmentally useful work.  But the military mindset on
this matter was revealed when, after a long delay, the Pentagon
proposed that the first project under SEI find a more
environmentally benign way to produce plutonium triggers for
nuclear weapons.

     At Pentagon conferences during the build up toward the Gulf
War, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney put the best face on
DoD environmental practice, admitting the need to remedy past
mistakes and championing efforts to recycle, substitute
non-toxic materials for harmful ones, and preserve nature on
military bases.  But Admiral David Jeremiah, vice chair of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, made clear that there are limits to how
gently armies can adapt to the environment.  When forced to
choose, the military's mission comes before environmental
protection.  War and preparation for war are "always inherently
destructive and inefficient," he said.

     A major international opportunity to deal with impacts
of the military on the environment was lost last spring when
the UN Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED)
sidestepped these problems. The U.S. delegation worked hard
to keep military matters off the agenda of the Earth Summit and
proposals holding nations accountable for how their militaries
handle their hazardous waste safely and contaminate the
environment with their weapons of mass destruction were watered
down or deleted.

     If the official conference was intent on giving the
military an environmental blank check, non-governmental
organizations meeting outside were not so ready to do so.
The NGOs negotiated their own agreement on militarism, the
environment, and development.  Condemning the failure of UNCED
to deal with military questions, the NGO "treaty" demanded "an
end to the exploitation of women, children, and other peoples
marginalized by dominant military systems."  The alternative
blueprint pledges groups to work for environmentally sound
demilitarization and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.  The
treaty's action plan calls for a comprehensive nuclear test ban
and promises greater information sharing about the impacts of
militarism and support for indigenous peoples opposition to the
use of their lands and airspace for military purposes.

     Many things can be done to alleviate some of the most
environmentally harmful practices of militaries -- measures that
must be taken as steps toward disarmament regardless of whether
bases remain open or are closed.  But in the end militaries will
have to be eliminated to finally bring an end to their war on
nature and us.

     John M. Miller is a member of the War Resisters League
Executive Committee and Coordinator of the International
Clearinghouse on the Military and the Environment/ARC, PO Box
150753, Brooklyn, NY 11215; [phone], e-mail: [e-mail].

******** From November/December 1992 (Vol.9 #6) issue of the
Nonviolent Activist, publication of the War Resisters League,
339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012. e-mail: [e-mail].
Subscriptions: $15/year.