At the moment environment destruction is now moving to the headlines. People are becoming more aware of the need to sort out our energy supplies away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. They are taking to the streets, "extinction rebellion", and the dedicated kids having a one day strike a week, all points to this awareness. Then there is the drive to get companies to vastly reduce their use of plastics. Then of course the blame game, it is up to you to just boil enough water for one cup of tea, turn your central heating down a degree, take a shorter shower, take a shallower bath. All well and good, after all, each little helps.
Meantime, airline companies are doing their best to increase passenger numbers, Travel agents are trying hard to ship more and more people to further and further "exotic" holidays. Cruise liners are pushing hell for leather to increase the numbers that float around the oceans, merrily polluting, CEO and other billionaire buy ever larger and more luxurious yachts and private jets.
Sort out that lot and you would make a big impact on environmental pollution. Then of course there is war, probably the most devastating polluter on the planet. Wars and the backup companies that are necessary for developing, manufacturing and delivering the implements of wars, plus the logistics of carrying out these endless wars, out strip most other polluters on the planet.
But so often, wars don't appear on the environmentalist's list, and governments all make pleasurable sounds about cutting greenhouse gases, but doing next to nothing, and the same time arming themselves to the teeth and supporting these endless wars.
Then there is the pentagon, without a doubt, the world's worst polluter.
(newspaper of the Party for Socialism and Liberation):
Navajo land contaminated with uranium
Large swaths of Native lands have been contaminated by the military. U.S.-funded mining companies blasted 4 million tons of uranium for atomic weapons out of more than 500 mines on Navajo land between 1944 and 1986. The mines are now abandoned, leaving the Navajo nation with poisonous waste from the mines, and radioactive drinking water. Many Navajo people have died of kidney failure and cancer, conditions linked to uranium contamination. And new research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show uranium in babies born now. And then there’s the contamination that waging war brings. Iraq is littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contamination, the Guardian notes. Additionally, after the bombing by the U.S. in its first war against Iraq in 1991:
“Sewage flowed into the streets and rivers. Refineries and pipelines leaked oil into the soil. The economic sanctions imposed on Iraq meant little was repaired and land and cities have been poisoned. One observer in Basra in 2008 said people “live amid mud and faeces. … Childhood cancer rates in Basra are the highest in Iraq. The city’s salty tap water makes people ill. And there is more garbage on the streets than municipal collectors can make a dent in.”
Read the full article HERE:U.S. use of toxic and radioactive depleted uranium weapons in Iraq have lead to an unprecedented number of birth defects there. These same U.S. weapons that poison people and the earth were used in Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq in both Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, North Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and Libya.
War-makers reject science, plan more polluting
But the U.S. Department of Defense is not done polluting. In November 2016, the U.S. Navy announced its plan to release 20,000 tons of environmental “stressors,” including heavy metals and explosives, into the coastal waters of the U.S. Pacific Northwest. It also plans to release every year some 4.7 to 14 tons of “metals with potential toxicity” into inland waters along the Puget Sound in Washington state.
In response to public concerns, a Navy spokeswoman said that heavy metals and depleted uranium are no more dangerous than any other metal, a statement that represents a clear rejection of scientific facts.
If we really wish to save the planet and the species that live on it, then we have to take a holistic view of the situation and environmentalists have to put war at the top of their list.
