IPPH Journal / Peace Making after Rio, 1992

Originally published in the International Perspectives in Public Health Journal
1992, Volume 8, ISSN: 8755-5328

One very obvious omission at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro was a discussion on the impact of war and preparation for war on the earth's environment. Two examples of this deliberate avoidance were: the failure to include the environmental lessons learned in the Gulf War in Agenda 21; and, the failure to use the Rio meeting as a platform to condemn China's underground explosion of a 1.5 megaton bomb (1000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb and 10 times above the limit set by the UN Partial Test Ban Treaty), which was set off a week before the Earth Summit.

Even more direct, in the item of Agenda 21 dealing with women, the US bracketed the word «war» twice in the context that women are deeply affected by war, famine, drought and other environmental disasters. At the last moment the US withdrew the brackets and let the word «war» stay. It is the only mention of war in the 800-page document coming out of Rio.

Why the conspiracy of silence? Why can't military impact on the environment be given equal platform with civilian impact on the environment?

I would like to suggest that the silence stems from a societal addiction to force and violence as a way to «control» society, both within the nation and between nations. A monopoly on violence defines a government and an army preserves the national identity and personal freedoms. This is old thinking but does it speak to today's reality? Has our addiction to force and violence blinded us to the resultant loss of fresh air security, clean water security, uncontaminated food security and economic security, which were traded for our national security strategy?

Even the terms I have used, such as water security, have a different meaning in the world of strategic and tactical planning than I have meant. Water security means (to the military mind) going to war over water, a real possibility in the Middle East, or conflict over other scarce resources. I mean contamination of the major underground aquifer in the Southwest United States by underground nuclear explosions in Nevada. This is the real loss of water security. Biologists, ecologists and public health specialists have been kept out of Pugwash, the Canadian Strategic Institutes, University foreign affairs programs and other so-called national security institutions. This has caused a fatal flaw in thinking, a blind spot, which has resulted in a startling reduction in the carrying power of the globe.

For me, the Rio summit was a way to engage the civilian economy in a massive effort to compensate for the excess of the military economy over the last 50 years.

Let us examine the major environmental problems: acid rain, ozone depletion, climate change, loss of topsoil, forest dieback, desertification and loss of tropical rainforest. These combined earth-illnesses have resulted in loss of species, increases in human allergies, asthma and cancers, and an increase in congenitally damaged children. If one stays only in the civilian sector when looking for the environmental culprits, one finds: fossil fuel generators, CFCs from refrigerators and air conditioners, automobiles, sewage and garbage disposal, plastic wrappings, etc. The «remedy» lies in the 3-R strategy: reduce, reuse and recycle, combined with legislation to reduce emissions. Individuals are counselled to not smoke, not eat fatty foods and not sit in the sun.

Let's look at the military reality:

Acid Rain: Did you know that nuclear explosions (and also emissions from nuclear generators) inject electrons (beta particles) into the air, causing interactions with nitrogen, oxygen and water vapour, to produce nitrates and nitric acid? The shift in the Northern Hemisphere's pH due to some 500 atmospheric nuclear explosions and 433 nuclear generators has never been estimated or even mentioned in the acid rain debate. Once the pH is reduced from 7 to 5, then the earth's ecosystem becomes vulnerable to any change in the acid rain. Preparation for nuclear war was probably a prominent component of the acid rain crisis, which threatens our lakes, fish, trees and our own respiratory tracks.

Soil Depletion: The primary cause of the loss of topsoil and the destruction of farmland has been the use of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilisers. These have their origins in military weaponry designed to kill the jungle in Vietnam and were touted as wonderful advances in civilization making farming easier and farms more productive. Their first purpose was destruction and this carries over even into watered-down products.

Ozone Destruction: In the 1950's, commercial use of supersonic aircraft was curtailed because of research showing it would damage the ozone layer. This did not deter the military, which routinely uses supersonic flight. The space shuttle routinely dumps 75 tonnes of chlorine directly into the ozone layer every time it is launched. The enlarged rocket motor used in the June 1992 launch with its enhanced boosters probably released even more chlorine. Deliberate military experiments conducted out of Churchill, Manitoba, involved chemical release modules. Some of the chemicals used (for example, barium chlorate, sodium and magnesium) are known to damage the ozone. All solid fuel rockets, whether for testing cruise missiles, transcontinental missiles or anti-scuds used in war, damage the ozone layer because they emit large amounts of hydrochloric acid. These emissions are a part of the global budget of atmospheric destruction and should not be exempt from scrutiny. During the 1980s there were, on average, 500 to 600 rockets launched yearly, reaching a peak in 1989 (prior to the Gulf War) of 1500 launches.

Climate Change: The problems of climate change include both a nuclear winter scenario and the greenhouse effect.

Nuclear Winter: Prior to the Gulf War, many scientists warned of a «nuclear winter» if the Iraqi oil wells were torched. After the fact, with an extraordinary cool summer in North America and an equally abnormally cool spring in Japan and in the Pacific, newspapers placed all the blame on Mt. Pinetubo in the Philippines. Certainly both have some effect, but why are we silent about the military contribution? Why do we claim that it is air exchange in the upper atmosphere between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, when the Gulf War requires no such postulated exchange? Very little is also said about the respiratory illnesses in our military personnel who fought in the Gulf and breathed the toxic fumes. We have no updates on the oil spills or resultant depletion of fish stock or the impact on desalination plants. What about the destruction of the fragile desert ecosystem? What about the two nuclear reactors and high level nuclear waste that were exploded by allied bombs?

Greenhouse Effect: At the greenhouse end of the climate spectrum, the primary culprit is CO2. The nuclear industry would like you to think that shifting to nuclear power and phasing out fossil fuel generators would solve the problem. Did you know that the CO₂ emissions from commercial jet planes are 30 times more efficiency than the same amount of CO₂ emitted on earth? (See NATURE, Jan. 1992) Military flights, which are another 20,000 feet higher than commercial flights, may have an efficiency of 100 times more. Do we ever hear about this source of pollution?

I have hardly touched on the whole spectrum of military products, which are undermining the viability of the earth's atmosphere and biosphere. The effects of radar, ELF radios, video display terminals, Star War spin-offs, microwaves, laser beams and particle beam weapons, etc., destroy of the natural life support system. At this point in time, it seems utterly clear that the addiction to violence is both self-destructive and life-destructive.

Civilian society is the passive cooperator in this addiction. People are starting to rebel. With mounting damage to the biosphere, to climate, to health and, above all, to the children, there will be a growing realisation of the source and a strong backlash against a regime that pretended to «protect and defend the nation», while actually destroying it.

What can people do to help in this rapidly deteriorating situation?

First: Discuss the destruction of resources through war rather than discussing resource wars.

Second: Acknowledge that war is not «natural» to humans but rather a learned behaviour designed to bias the negotiating process (the so-called `bargaining from strength').

Third: Embrace justice and international equity as a way to peace, not past coercive behaviour. Help to prevent other nations from taking the wrong course used by Western countries.

Fourth: Demand environmental impact hearings on all military undertakings including the space program. Unmask the self-destructive tendencies of war making.

Five: Learn to love and appreciate biological organisms, the wonder of reproduction, and the intricacies of the web of life.