Essential Information

A compendium of articles, reports, essays and investigations into the effects of militarism on the environment and human society. Send additional documents to editor@envirosagainstwar.org.

GENERAL IMPACTS

What You Will Not Hear About Iraq
(Prof. Adil E. Shamoo / Foreign Policy In Focus & Global Research)

Iraq has between 25 and 50 percent unemployment, a dysfunctional parliament, rampant disease, an epidemic of mental illness, and sprawling slums. The killing of innocent people has become part of daily life. What a havoc the United States has wreaked in Iraq.
/know/read.php?itemid=9811

War and the Environment
(Peace Pledge Union)

Images of Devastated battlefields are all too familiar. The ploughs in Flanders fields still turn up human bones every year. But twentieth century technology, busily applied to the practice of war, has ensured a more lethal harvest. For example, landmines.
/know/read.php?itemid=9413

Osama bin Laden and Environmental Jihad
(Micah M. White / Adbusters Magazine)

In January 2010, as the war against terrorism dragged into its ninth year, Osama bin Laden, the ideological leader of the mujahideen issued a statement that could have been drafted by any Western environmentalist: "Talk of climate change isn't extravagant speculation: It is a tangible fact that is not diminished by its being muddled by some greedy heads of major corporations."
/know/read.php?itemid=9406

Osama bin Laden on "The Way to Save the Earth"
(As-Sahab Media Foundation & Nefa Foundation)

Commentary: "This is a message to the whole world about those who cause climate change and its dangers -- intentionally or unintentionally -- and what we must do. Talk of climate change isn't extravagant speculation: it is a tangible fact which is not diminished by its being muddled by some greedy heads of major corporations. The effects of global warming have spread to all continents of the world."
/know/read.php?itemid=9407

The Global Economic Crisis, The Great Depression of the XXI Century
(Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall / Global Research Publishers)

In all major regions of the world, the economic recession is deep-seated, resulting in mass unemployment, the collapse of state social programs and the impoverishment of millions. The crisis is accompanied by a worldwide process of militarization, a "war without borders" led by the US and its NATO allies. The Pentagon's "long war" is intimately related to the restructuring of the global economy.
/know/read.php?itemid=9391

Vietnam: War and the Environment
(John Tully / Green Left Weekly)

Vietnam's suffering did not end with the liberation of Saigon in 1975. Perhaps no country since Haiti has come to independence under such adverse conditions -- conditions which included environmental damage on a scale hitherto unseen in warfare. The damage was part of an attrition strategy aimed at driving the peasants into the cities to deprive the National Liberation Front of a population and food base.
/know/read.php?itemid=9340

Healing the Wounds of War in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam
(Nordic News Network & Vice President Nguyen Thi Binh & Prof. Nguyen Trong Nhan )

In 2002. a summit of international experts met in Sweden to call for major efforts to alleviate long-term environmental and human health consequences of the US war against Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. "We cannot ignore the United States' responsibility to help resolve the war of aggression's long-term effects on the people and the environment."
/know/read.php?itemid=9341

Environmental Warfare in 10 years
(Diane Francis, Editor at Large / the National Post )

Oil company CEOs and Canadian, US and British government officials attending the Global Business Forum in Banff last September heard a chilling forecast of military clashes if there is an environmental meltdown due to climate change.
/know/read.php?itemid=9317

Environmental Warfare: How to Wreck the Environment
(Gordon J. F. MacDonald / Reprinted from the book, "Unless Peace Comes" (1968) )

To consider the consequences of environmental modification in struggles among nations, we need to consider the present state of the subject and how postulated developments in the field could lead, ten to fifty years from now, to weapons systems that would use nature in new and perhaps unexpected ways.
/know/read.php?itemid=9318

At Peoples Climate Summit, Bolivian President Blames Capitalism for Global Warming
(Environmental News Service & IPS & Eduardo Galeano / HCV Analysis)

At the Peoples Climate Summit, attended by delegates from more than 150 countries, Bolivia's President Evo Morales proclimed capitalism to blame for global warming and the accelerated deterioration of the planetary ecosystem in a speech today opening an international conference on climate change and the "rights of Mother Earth."
/know/read.php?itemid=9304

US Military Programs Strive for Renewable Energy Goals
(PowerGen Worldwide)

The Defense Department has begun a programs to reach a new renewable energy standard, according to "Reenergizing America's Defense," a report released by the Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate. The DOD, which uses nearly 80 percent of the government's energy consumption, hopes to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and cut pollution by adopting energy efficiency and clean energy technologies.
/know/read.php?itemid=9305

The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism
(Barry Sanders: Book Excerpt / AK Press )

When we declare war on a foreign nation, we now also declare war on the Earth, on the soil and plants and animals, the water and wind and people, in the most far-reaching and deeply infecting ways. A bomb dropped on Iraq explodes around the world. We have no way of containing the fallout. Technology fails miserably here. War insinuates itself, like an aberrant gene and, left unchecked, has the capacity for destroying the Earth’s complex and sometimes fragile system.
/know/read.php?itemid=8381

Pakistan City Centre 'Destroyed'
(BBC World News)

Taliban rebels were driven out of Mingora on Saturday by Pakistan government troops. The scale of the war damage to the main city in the Swat valley has become clear. A BBC correspondent who went to Mingora has reported widespread damage — all the buildings and shops in the town square had been completely destroyed. With water, food, electricity and fuel unavailable, the International Red Cross said it was "gravely concerned" by the humanitarian situation in Swat.
/know/read.php?itemid=8344

Retired Generals Call on Military, Citizens to Step Up to Climate Challenge
(Bill Becker / Solve Climate.com)

Twelve retired admirals and generals who made the national security case for clean energy yesterday put two other important messages in their report. First, the U.S. military must do its part to help the nation shift away from fossil fuels. Second, the American people must get directly involved in protecting the nation from harm.
/know/read.php?itemid=8300

Please Do Not Return our Antiquities!
(Fatih Abdulsalam / Asssaman.com)

We now have organized criminal gangs specialized in the looting and smuggling of Mesopotamian artifacts. Since the US invasion, these gangs have accumulated power, experience and great wealth. The Baghdad government has no guts to open this file because once it unfolds powerful actors, powerful states and powerful personalities and factions will be exposed too.
/know/read.php?itemid=7051

Consider the Consequences of Bombing Iran’s Nuclear Power Plants, and Pray
(Floyd Rudmin / Global Research,)

If the USA or Israel deliberately bomb Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities, radioactive elements would be released into the environment. There would be horrific deaths for families in the immediate vicinity. An estimated 3 million deaths would result in 3 weeks from bombing the enrichment facilities near Esfahan. The fallout would cover Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India and the contamination would last 700 million years. McCain, Clinton and the media seem to think that's not a bad idea.
/know/read.php?itemid=6845

Military vs. Climate Security
(Miriam Pemberton / Foreign Policy In Focus)

Accepting his Nobel Peace Prize, Al Gore called on the nations of the world to mobilize to avert climate disaster "with a sense of urgency and shared resolve that has previously been seen only when nations have mobilized for war." This report measures in fiscal terms how far our own nation has to go to reach that goal. For the 2008 fiscal year, the government budgeted $647.51 billion for military security. It budgeted $7.37 billion to slow climate change
/know/read.php?itemid=6627

Global Warming or Conversion of the military-Industrial Complex?
(Bruce K. Gagnon / Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space)

As people like Al Gore and other environmentalists look for solutions, rarely is the Pentagon mentioned as a polluter and a place that we can look to for change if life is to survive on our mother Earth.
/know/read.php?itemid=6589

The Three-Trillion-Dollar War
(Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes / Times (UK))

The cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have grown to staggering proportions to become the second most-expensive war in US history. The total costs (to the US alone) are “conservatively” estimated to top $3 trillion; the expense of the two wars is now costing the US economy $28.5 billion a month.
/know/read.php?itemid=6556

Iraq Black Hole: The $2-Trillion War
(Craig Lambert / The Harvard Magazine)

Before the US invaded Iraq in 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put the likely costs at between $50 billion and $60 billion. The Congressional Budget Office now projects Iraq-related expenditures to surpass $500 billion. Independent economics now estimate the illegal invasion will cost Americans "in excess of $2 trillion."
/know/read.php?itemid=4057

Peacemaking: Practicing at the Intersection of Law and Human Conflict
(Nook by Douglas Noll / Cascadia Publishing)

A critical academic investigation into the roots of peacemaking. Noll's book offers insights about human conflict an provides "an integrated view of why people fight, how they fight, what they fight over — and how they can instead make peace, whether in the courtroom or beyond."
/know/read.php?itemid=2878

UN Report Shows 80 Percent of Iraqi Universities Damaged
(RHC)

A United Nations study reveals that 80 percent of Iraq's educational institutions have been vandalized, looted or otherwise damaged since the US-led invasion in 2003. During the past two years, as many as 48 university professors have been assassinated.
/know/read.php?itemid=2695

Kyoto Never! Oil Consumption and National Security
(Jamie Weinstein / Cornell Daily Sun / Renew America)

A conservative commentary from a Cornell university columnist notes the connection between the military, oil consumption, pollution and greenhouse gases and warns against adopting the Kyoto greenhouse-gas-reduction treaty because this would allow "pressure groups, both domestic and international, to hamstring US military power."
/know/read.php?itemid=2433

US 'Rogue Nation' Image Hurts Dollar in Asia
(William Pesek Jr. / Bloomberg News Service)

The Bush administration's unilateralism has angered not just former allies but also the powerful foreign exchange markets. Their message to Washington: "The free ride for the rogue nation is over. No more guns and butter, or wads of foreign cash for a nation deeply enmeshed in the Middle East, heavily indebted at home and seemingly disengaged from the rest of the world."
/know/read.php?itemid=2205

Iraq log: 1 December 2004
(BBC Online)

What is life like for ordinary Iraqis and others caught up in events? We are publishing a range of accounts here from people inside Iraq about how they, their families and friends live day to day and what the bigger events in the headlines mean to them
/know/read.php?itemid=2138

A Thousand Fallujahs: Urban Warfare
(Pepe Escobar / Asia Times)

Resorting to attacking entire cities, the US has been caught in a giant spider's web. In Fallujah, Ramadi, Samarra, Latifiyah, Kirkuk, Mosul and even Baghdad, the streets are on fire. Asia Times reports the US now faces "hundreds, thousands of Fallujahs -- the Mesopotamian echo of a thousand Vietnams. The Iraqi resistance has even regained control of a few Baghdad neighborhoods... there are practically no US troops around, even as regular explosions can be heard all over the city."
/know/read.php?itemid=2068

Weapons Dust Worries Iraqis. US Unconcerned
(Thomas D. Williams / The Hartford Courant)

With Washington refusing to take responsibility for the radioactive contamination of the country, Iraq's provisional government is asking the United Nations for help cleaning up the low-level radioactive, metal dust spread across local battlefields by US and British forces during the Persian Gulf wars.
/know/read.php?itemid=2024

Uranium Pollution in Iraq Damaging
(Hina Alam / IDS News)

Diane Henshel, an associate professor of public and environmental affairs and co-author of a recent study in Nature, warns that the depleted uranium now present in Iraq's soil, air may cause health issues. In addition, DU is a weapon of mass destruction that also has contaminated US soldiers.
/know/read.php?itemid=2019

Weapons as Wastes
(Earthwatch / United Nations Environment Programme)

The US alone has over 30,000 tons of chemical weapons whose disposal could cost at least $12 billion. More than 50 ocean and inland lake sites across the US contain explosive items, and harbours and beaches at the site of old battles throughout the world are riddled with unexploded bombs.
/know/read.php?itemid=1937

The Next World War: Tribes, Cities, Nations, And Ecological Decline
(Roy Woodbridge / University of Toronto Press)

Preoccupied with the war on terrorism, we have lost sight of a more dangerous enemy of social peace and progress — the inability of the world's people to access the ecological goods and services they need to maintain and build their societies. By 2025, the combined demands of continued economic growth and the reduction of global poverty will require, annually, the ecological equivalent of three or four Earths.
/know/read.php?itemid=1739

Corporate Power: The Driving Force behind Washington’s Brutal Foreign Policy
(JK Galbraith / The Guardian)

A former US Ambassador writes: "Civilized life, as it is called, is a great white tower celebrating human achievements, but at the top there is permanently a large black cloud." That cloud is profiteering through war and death. Today powerful corporate managers, in aliance with military and political leaders, have usurped the political system to install an economy that feeds on weapons and devastation. Instead of pursuing social justice and human elevation, this new regime has given "a privileged position to the development of weapons and the threat and reality of war. Mass slaughter has become the ultimate civilized achievement."
/know/read.php?itemid=1740

Pentagon's Key Findings on Climate Threat
(The Observer)

The Pentagon's alarming report about climate change as the greatest national security issue facing the US and every other nation on Earth continues to reverberate. The London Observer has prepared a short list of the Pentagon's troubling predictions.
/know/read.php?itemid=1152

War and Weather Threaten Food Security in 23 African Countries.
(United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO))

Armed conflict and extreme weather events are causing mounting deaths in Angola, Burundi, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
/know/read.php?itemid=449

The Environmental Impacts of Various Conflict Zones.
United Nations Environment Programme. (PDF files)
http://postconflict.unep.ch/index.htm

Environmental Legacy in Kuwait. An Environmental Assessment of Kuwait
Seven Years after the Gulf War. Final Report – August 1998.
Green Cross International
http://www.gci.ch/GreenCrossPrograms/legacy/Kuwait/kuwait7years.html

The Unfinished War. Environmental Impact: Oil Fires and Spills Leave Dangerous Legacy
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/gulf.war/legacy/environment/

Environmental Impact of Conflict Assessment Studies: NA/SA, Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa
Inventory of Conflict and the Environment.
http://www.american.edu/projects/mandala/TED/ice/icehp21.htm

Environmental Impacts of War - Gulf War, Afghanistan, well fires, depleted uranium, chemical and biological agents.
EMS – Environmental Media Services.
http://www.ems.org/war/risks.html

How an Iraq War Might Scar Environment
ABC News.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/World/iraq030305_environment.html

Vietnam, Afghanistan, health of US military personnel, Russia and more.
Earth Crash, Earth Spirit.
http://eces.org/ec/population/military.shtml

Gulf War Facts
National Gulf War Resources Center
http://www.ngwrc.org/Facts/default.htm

On Oil and War - Talking Points & Key Facts.
The Sustainable Energy and Economy Network.
http://www.seen.org/PDFs/oil_and_war.pdf

Gulf environment faces worse threats
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2840995.stm

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