In a dark time reason takes a backseat, and propaganda can get rash. To convince 'nose-in-the-air' liberals that Saddam is really a bad boy, he is being projected as an environmental criminal. Suddenly, the civilised constituency has woken up to the environmental devastation this war may wreak. Human suffering has nothing new to offer to our sensibility. It looks like any well-scripted and well-produced Hollywood action movie. Our numb souls may only react to the injury inflicted upon 'mother nature'!
in a dark time reason takes a backseat, and propaganda can get rash. To convince 'nose-in-the-air' liberals that Saddam is really a bad boy, he is being projected as an environmental criminal. Suddenly, the civilised constituency has woken up to the environmental devastation this war may wreak. Human suffering has nothing new to offer to our sensibility. It looks like any well-scripted and well-produced Hollywood action movie. Our numb souls may only react to the injury inflicted upon 'mother nature'!
In its pursuit of a 'new angle', the 'breaking news' media discovered the environment. Now everyone's talking about it. Britain's Liberal Democrats have warned about the war's environmental costs. British defence secretary Geoff Hoon sang an ode to the Royal Marines in the al-Faw peninsula. The troops had managed to avert "catastrophic ecological damage"; evil Saddam was planning to pour oil in the Gulf.
Our hearts are supposed to bleed for a daily emission of 850,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from burning oilfields, or more than six million barrels of leaking oil, or 200 hectares of oil-contaminated land. Spoilsport Iraqis are damaging future business possibilities! We are supposed to forget this war was planned by a coalition obsessed with oil.
The coalition force is 'allowed' to use depleted uranium, 'authorised' to eliminate the Iraqi leadership, injure powerless, starving people. But Saddam? He must take care of the environment. Meanwhile the us is yet to ratify article 55 of the 1977 amendment of the Geneva convention on international armed conflicts banning attack on the environment. The uk signed only in 1998.
In the us, right-thinking good senators are busy being sensible. They have put a cap on a oil-drilling project in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in northeast Alaska, calling it an ecologically irresonsible act. Sounds good, but let us realise that all-American good thinking is strictly own-backyard stuff.
There is a new appeal from top scientists of Geneva based international conservation organisation iucn to stop war immediately and think of the environment. We aren't impressed. Such bogey concern is speculative, created to please Northern conservationists. This war must stop, because it brings misery to people.
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