PLANET EARTH
Introduction
I felt the piercing cold and saw the clear blue sky and magnificent sun. It was an unreal experience, this winter day at the top of Beckley Hill in Vermont. I was more used to a winter filled with overcast, cold and dreary days, and had formed a close mental association between sunny and warm.
The sunny cold of Vermont made me think more generally about deceptive appearances and how misleading a `first look' can be. My mother always looked well, even at the age of 95, and this was probably because of the twinkle in her eyes and the fact that her spirit was still fully alive. Some of my friends with cancer could have walked in a beauty pageant and no one would ever have noticed that they were sick. It made me think about the Earth and the delicately balanced natural processes that regulate it. If the Earth were damaged or suffering from some `illness,' would we be able to recognize the problem early on, when it might be possible to reverse the process?
On this Vermont day, the birch trees were stripped of their leaves, standing naked in seasonal repose. But this bareness was normal, natural, and in the spring, the delicate green leaves would appear again to clothe the trees in elegance. Obviously one must understand the complete life cycle of a natural organism in order not to mistake a dormant period for death or deterioration. The Earth itself has cycles, and our human ancestors have faithfully marked the passing of the seasons and the weather for some 150 years. However, our knowledge of how these cycles function and how they interact is, as yet, incomplete. We do not know how resilient the Earth is, nor can we gauge its capacity to heal itself.
On a clear cold day, the Earth looks wonderful, the air feels refreshing and it can be hard to believe the warnings that we have seriously compromised its health. Yet, since the United Nations Conference on the Environment in 1972, it has become obvious that the Earth faces serious problems: trees dying, species becoming extinct, contamination and depletion of drinking water, soil erosion, deforestation, smog, reduction of fish stocks, poverty and overcrowding. More recently, the incidence of violent weather has been increasing at an alarming rate and there is evidence that many so-called `natural' disasters are linked to human activities. All of our attempts to restore the health of the planet by changing our lifestyle, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, `reusing, recycling and reducing' seem not to have stemmed the tide. In fact in September 1999 the United Nations Environment Program announced that the environmental crisis is deepening not receding.
It is my belief that we have been treating the symptoms but not the cause of the disease of the Earth. We have been abusing Earth's natural systems, the way it regulates temperature and water supply, recycles waste and protects life. For me, some of the most fundamental abuses have occurred because of our continued reliance on the military.
Wars result in immediate deaths and destruction, but the environmental consequences can last hundreds, often thousands of years. And it is not just war itself that undermines our life support system, but also the research and development, military exercises and general preparation for battle that are carried out on a daily basis in most parts of the world. The majority of this pre-war activity takes place without the benefit of civilian scrutiny and therefore we are unaware of some of what is being done to our environment in the name of `security.'
While there is a legitimate need for a police force in the global community, there can be no rationale for a military force. Blowing up a neighbourhood suspected of harboring a criminal has never been seen as a civilized way of promoting domestic order. Nor is destruction of a nation and contamination of its food, air and other resources a means of achieving global peace. Of course, the inability to wage war does not eliminate regional disputes--it merely guarantees that the disputes will be submitted to negotiated settlement rather than violence. Large political and trade coalitions, such as the Organization of African States (OAS) and the European Union, can be formed through legal discussions rather than coming together through force.
In fact, I believe that our definition of global security has become outdated. Military security has its foundations in either the protection of wealth, land and privilege or the desire to confiscate the wealth and land of others. Modern society seems to have an unhealthy dependency on economic gain, and this has resulted in a widening gap between the haves and the have nots of the world. This is a major destabilizing factor that actually causes global insecurity, not security. It also distorts a market economy towards catering for the wealthy whilst the needs of the poor go unanswered. This cannot be the basis of true democracy.
I also believe we have been confused by the struggle between communism and capitalism, which has been the dominant dialogue among thinkers for many years. This is basically a conflict over how to manage the excess in an economy. The essence of the dispute is whether accumulation of wealth should be held by government, which claims to use it for the benefit of the masses through funding of social programs, or by private entrepreneurs, who think they can more wisely `build the economy' thereby providing jobs and a better standard of living for the people.
The problem with both systems is that they have focused on economic stability at the expense of ecological and social stability, when it has become increasingly clear that these three are interdependent. The most urgent problem facing us at the moment is how to sustain Earth, our life-support system, not how to redistribute wealth (although I think if we learn how to do the former we will be forced to recognize the wisdom of the latter). A meeting of the G7 to decide on interest rates cannot rectify the over-stretching of our natural resources and the manipulation of Earth's restorative power! Life thrives on balance, not on a singular focus on the economic `bottom line.'
However, this goal of balanced social planning requires that we first provide a new job description for the military in order that they truly fulfil their purpose of serving and protecting the interests of the people. In order to do this, we have to look beyond the model of global dominance through force towards more gentle, cooperative solutions to the problems we face. To many, this may seem idealistic in a world dominated by what I would call a hard and unbending capitalism. But it is only by envisaging ideal solutions that we can begin the process of change. Already there are signs of hope. The women's movement and the growing awareness of human rights, animal rights and Earth rights are all signs of profound transformations in societal structures and in the way inequalities and conflict are addressed. The United Nations is undergoing a period of reform and can now benefit from fifty years of experience. The stewardship of the land exercised for centuries by indigenous people is slowly being recognized and their ability to live in the midst of plenty without exploiting or destroying that abundance is a lesson for those who aspire to global management. The present crisis is a global one and in order to solve it, we must seek global solutions.
This book is divided into three parts. In part one, I will examine two ma . or conflicts that give a snapshot of high-tech war at the end of the twentieth century. In the portrait of these two wars, I hope to give the reader some idea of the extensive environmental impact of modern weapons and also to question the motivation and results of what has been called `humanitarian' intervention. I also hope to demonstrate that in understanding our history, we can better see the implications of today's preparations for war and find a new path into the future.
But war itself is only one side of the military coin. Equally destructive to the health of our planet is the military experimentation and research which exploits our natural resources and destabilizes a balanced ecology. In part two I will look at some of the consequences of past research and show how the tendency to experiment first and ask questions later characterizes the search for ever-more sophisticated weaponry, especially in the race towards `Star Wars.' It is worth noting that in this book I focus primarily on the exploitation of the Earth environment as a weapon, although my analysis of the overall problem does of course include atomic, biological and chemical weapons. This is because there is more public awareness of the dangers of these `a, b, c' weapons, a popular consensus that they are unacceptable, and international legislation prohibiting their use. The fact that many countries continue to develop them only serves to emphasize the need to find new means of solving international disputes.
In the final section of Planet Earth, I seek to redefine our notion of security. At present, the greatest threat to our security is not invasion by `the enemy'; it is the destruction of the natural resources upon which we all rely for life and health. Without efficient use and responsible management of these resources, the fabric of civilization will disintegrate and we will be reduced to fighting with each other over basics such as clean air and water. In order to provide future generations with what I have called `ecological' security, we need to work on both a global and a local level.