I found this interesting article from just before the Iraq War, in January 2003 in "THE GUARDIAN". (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/19/iraq5)It talked about the possible effects of a new Iraq war, if it happened...which it did (obviously).
It talked about the effect that the First Gulf War had on the environment but also on civilians and it makes some assumptions about the latest war.
Another article was from 2005, from BBC, talking about the impact that the war had on the environment of Iraq. It mentions some of the things from the previous article and it projects that costs for decontamination of Iraq would be around $40 million.
This is very interesting, since I found a bunch of random facts about the war on this site where it states how much pollution the war has caused so far (in carbon emissions) and how much money has been poured into it.
It is really amazing and truly fascinating to think that the U.S. would rather waste so much money by attacking a nation and then trying to rebuild it, instead of providing that money for stopping the current global warming trends, or spending more money on the war in Iraq than the whole world spends in order to stop global warming. I'm just overwhelmed by the information... I am not sure how accurate they are, or how accurate they can even be, but still.... even if it's somewhere near that, it's ridiculous.
ok it's Iraq but it's interesting
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Here is a link to a blog put up by Morgan on a different Blog. There are a
number of entries that tie more to your topic than theirs. Enjoy.
15 years ago
Posts
One thing that you don't really address is that motivations for war are never (As far I as know) environmental. There is a different objective for this and environmental impacts are rarely even considered. This goes back to what I wrote about last week about how "We create, destroy and modify without knowing or understanding the consequences and side effects.". I think this applies to this instance as well. We often act before thinking through every angle. It is time-consuming and tedious and slows down any decision making, but especially when there is more time to make the decision and the decision is so important this can be essential
ReplyDeleteThat is true.
ReplyDeleteBut I was thinking that if a simple reporter could have done that work and written an article about it, should the U.S. government had done the same.
I think the problem is that they did not care, since it doesn't affect the U.S. directly - well, the costs of the war do, but what happens to the Iraqi environment is not their concern.
So, I am not sure if I agree with the statement that we "create, destroy and modify without knowing or understanding the consequences and side effects." - it's more that the benefits of doing it surpass the cost to the environment.... :(
When you say that the U.S. does not care, I think you in a way, are agreeing with my original statement.
ReplyDeleteThe environment and the war are issues that we do not fully understand. We see the positive benefits to our "national security" from toppling a ruthless dictator (who we supported militarily) as something that is in a way, quantifiable. It is like a math equation where we try and add up all the things that we perceive to be good things and try to subtract the things we see as bad things. If the equation ends up being positive then we react in a certain way and if it is negative we react different. In this equation, the environment is not even a factor. We are not recognizing its importance and the consequences of this.
There are certain things which we find important and we push these things to the forefront, without understanding (or trying to understand?) the interconnectivity. They become a more important aspect of the equation because of how we think.
I think a part of this problem is that we do think of it as an equation. Instead of seeing the world and its dynamic nature we see things in a static sense. I guess this could go on forever and I am somewhat starting to lose myself so I will quit now
That made a lot of sense. Things like this always make me wonder what would have happened if Al Gore had been president. I think that we do recognize the importance of the environment, but we only care about how it effects us. I do think that the U.S. government is aware that negative impacts on the Iraqi environment will ultimately negatively impact the US, but for some reason this connection isn't influencing policy decesions yet. I wonder when it will get to a point, and what it will take, for that connection to start becoming as important as national security.
ReplyDeleteI am really curious as to see how many people in the U.S. government, or any other government in the world for that matter, opposes the belief that global warming is actually happening or at least that it is happening because of the human factors.
ReplyDeleteI know that there are many people who do not believe it's us and that it's natural and what not, but I am curious who has more influence in the governments. Maybe that's why not many concrete things are being done to help the environment?
On the Al Gore note - I am not sure how much he would have done... but surely more than Bush did!