Approximately 4,000-5,000 Tehran residents are estimated to die every year from air pollution

I found this article about environmental issues in Iran and there are plenty to go around with!
I was just astounded by some claims that around 5,000 people in Tehran alone die from air pollution.

One can clearly see that the problems of a relatively successfully developing country are depicted in Iran as well. High levels of pollution, huge increases in population, higher energy consumption and the increase in CO2 emissions. Between 1980 and 2000, the CO2 emissions doubled from 30 million metric tons of carbon to over 80 million and, according to Wikipedia, in 2004 the levels are around 433 million, which is 5 times more than in 2000, and 14 times more than 1980. I just find those number to be very impressive!


Oh, and I found an interesting video about the largest and most important river of Iran and the pollution. It is clearly very biased, claiming that the Iranian government is not doing anything to prevent the pollution because there is a large number of Arabs living in that area, which is bordering Iraq.
I just found it interesting to see how people would assume such things (which might or might not be true) and actually see the pollution on video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3ix4_NsqI8

Gulf War Oil Spill Pictures

The deliberate oil spill of 1991 in the Persian Gulf negatively impacted those waters, as well as the coastal ecosystems of Iran, destroying wildlife and plant habitat, as well as contaminating the water source. 

Here are some photos of the largest oil spill ever (1,450,000), some of them are better than others: 

i got these from this website: http://rpitt.eng.ua.edu/Class/EffectsandFates/Module7/Module7.htm, which also has photos from other big oil spills. some of these photos are closer up and show how the oil in the water looks and bubbles up and just sits on top of the water. it's disgusting, and it makes me think of Free Willy 2 when Willy is dying because an oil spill and they just can scrape the oil of of him. That wasn't even real and its horrifying. This oil spill was HUGE, real, and intentional. I think that the environmental impacts of our actions are disregarded in much of our development as nations, but especially in war.

Potential impacts of an Israeli attack on Iran

Times Article

While this does not directly address the environment and how it may be impacted by an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. I do not know the details of nuclear radiation, nuclear power, and precision airstrikes but it seems as though this could create some major problems. Would there be a more serious explosion if a location with nuclear research going on? It seems as though this could be dangerous because of the unknown potential affects of this action, and any possible reprisals by the Iranians or other Islamic countries of the area.


And while it does not really apply to this week's topic this blog is quite interesting

Iran-Iraq War & Waterway Claims

http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/iraniraq.htm

This article talks about the role that the Shatt-al-Arab waterway played in the Iraq/Iran war. Since an ambiguous "The Peace Treaty of 1639" between the Persians and the Ottoman empire, this waterway has been disputed. Although we often think of the Iran/Iraq war as war about religion, this article talks about the main role that the waterway played in its initiation and both countries perseverance.

The article also talks about how although their was a lot of potential for the environmental damage during the Iran/Iraq war, relatively little actually occured (compared to the potential).

So I guess ultimately this post isn't about the environemnal impacts of war, but rather the environmental causes.

http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/iraniraq.htm

Health Hazards 9/11

Ground Zero Hazards

Environmental impact of 9/11 worse than feared

The articles that I found talk a lot about the health effects associated with the 9/11 attacks. The video does not talk much about what the health effects were, but it does show how many sources said that the area was perfectly safe.

Given our reading centered around Al qaeda I thought that it would be interesting to link our topic back to the U.S. directly. I think that it is important to realize how the issues we are discussing (such as terrorism) can directly influence

our lives here in the U.S.

link

Here's the link (I finally got it to work)

http://www.afghan-web.com/geography/environment.html

Waging War on the Environment in Afghanistan

For some reason right now, I am unable to post links here, but I found an article called, “The Condition of Afghanistan’s Environment” by Daud Saba and Mardom Nama-e Bakhter through google.

It is quite old (from 1997) but I thought it would be interesting to see what the status was during the active rule of the Taliban compared to the current status of the environment in Afghanistan today.

As others have noted in their posts, the article mentions the loss of forested area as a huge problem in the already very arid country. Much of this problem is due to deforestation, but a significant amount has also by burned or destroyed by war technology in chemicals. These chemical weapons, which Afghanistan used in the war against the Soviet Union, contributed smog and pollution to the air. As a result, these are obviously direct environmental consequences from war, as opposed to what we have seen in other countries we have studied where much of the degradation is linked indirectly to war through oil.

The article talks about how even worse than the decreasing amount of forests as well as farming land is the terrifying environmental and human danger of land mines, which are planted for war purposes. As of 1997, there were more than 10 million land mines in Afghanistan. (WHAT!?)

We must ask, at what point does environmental degradation become a government’s weapon against its own people. The state of the environment in Afghanistan desperately needs to be addressed, but are there motives for those who hold power to prevent reform?