Earth: Too Small for War
George M. Woodwell
The Woods Hole Research Center
April 12th, 2002
Our warriors in the Pentagon are complaining that environmental
laws inhibit their capacities in training for war and in developing new
weapons, according to a recent report in The New York Times (March 30,
p. A 11). They are especially concerned about "the Clean Water Act,
the Clean Air Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act; the Noise Control
Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and the Endangered Species Act." A
special exemption form the Congress is deemed appropriate. They did not
mention the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, having long since had
the Congress set them both aside in the interest of effective control
of any who might be defined as "against us." That's pretty
much all there is to government aside from the tax structure, which one
assumes they consider essential to the continued existence of the Pentagon
and the conduct of wars.
One can develop considerable sympathy for those in the Pentagon charged
with practicing for the ruination of the earth in finite segments. Practicing
war is awkward around people, and people are more and more common. There
was a time when we could test nuclear weapons in the atmosphere with
near impunity. We did so at Alamogordo, New Mexico, in the Great Basin
Desert in Nevada, and at Bikini and Enewetak in the South Pacific. The
Russians did it at Novaya Zemlya in the high Siberian Arctic. The Chinese
did it in central Asia. We learned that these weapons contaminated the
whole earth with radioactivity that was rained out of the atmosphere
for months after a test. The streets of New England towns had measurable
radioactivity in puddles after the tests in Nevada and we could measure
the radioactivity from all these tests on successive circuits around
the world. The tests were driven underground in 1962 under a treaty led
by the United States. The world was too small for such tests. That was
forty years ago when there were less than 3 billion people in the world.
There are now more than 6 billion.
Twenty-two years later the Reagan administration's adventures in war
led to flexing of the nuclear muscles to the point where the scientific
community felt it necessary to review the issue once again. In a major
symposium in Washington, scientists from East and West pointed out that
a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia engaging only a small
fraction of the weapons available would raise enough smoke and dust into
the atmosphere to darken and cool the earth for days to several weeks.
Effects on agriculture globally would be devastating quite independently
of the effects of heat and blast and residual ionizing radiation. The
weapons were clearly proved not only untestable in the atmosphere but
also unusable. The earth was too small.
Meanwhile, the human undertaking expanded globally and a world that
seemed large in 1950 suddenly became full by the year 2000 when we passed
the 6 billion mark and the earth as a whole was beset by a series of
major human-caused biophysical problems. Climatic disruption, long anticipated
by the scientific community, had become reality as the earth warmed.
The rate varies with latitude and locale, but a global rate of 0.1-0.2
degree C/decade depending on latitude is approximately what has been
experienced over the last half century. Continued warming into the indefinite
future seems assured unless we can stop the further accumulation of heat-trapping
gases in the atmosphere.
The consequences of an accelerating global climatic disruption coincident
with both a continuing surge in the human population and a parallel surge
in industrialization are such that scientists think there is a global
emergency and were pleased to be able to advance the Framework Convention
on Climate Change, which has been universally ratified. It takes the
bold step of putting all the nations on record as intending to stabilize
the heat-trapping gas content of the atmosphere at levels that will protect
human interests and nature, a point long passed.
At the same moment we are watching the final destruction of fisheries,
the cumulative poisoning of the land and water with industrial wastes,
and the progressive biotic impoverishment of the earth as a whole, even
as it becomes clear that the continuity of a habitable environment depends
on the continuity of the life-processes that maintain that environment.
Suddenly, a new administration in the U.S., obsessed with war as the
only antidote to global terrorism, is willing, even anxious, to abrogate
environmental laws and elementary protection of civil rights such as
clean air and clean water in favor of license for the military to expand
the devastation through practice for a major further expansion. This
latest assault on common sense comes as a small addition to a torrent
of assaults on environment at the request of industrial and other commercial
interests, which have the undivided attention of this administration
to the detriment of virtually all aspects of the public welfare around
the globe.
The fact is that the earth is beset on all sides. There is not space
for the currently "normal" activities of six billion people
in pursuit of the essential requirements for life. The biosphere is running
down, losing capacity for support of humans and all life without the
intrusions of war, or training for war.
The message is for Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair and Mr. Sharon and Mr. Arafat
and for all other national leaders. We do not have space or place or
time or wealth to squander on war. It is time to get back to the important
job of re-adjusting the human undertaking to fit on a small earth before
that earth, the only human habitat, and all of civilization cascade into
irreparable impoverishment and chaos. War can only speed the process
and guarantee the product.
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