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‘Peace won’t cost the earth’ but it might save the environment – On Line Opinion – 19/11/2008

Peace won’t cost the earth’ but it might save the environment
OnLine opinion By John Tomlinson –  19 November 2008 Essentially human beings cannot afford war. Nor can we continue to breed like rabbits. The imprint of humans on this planet is getting close to a tipping point which, once reached, will result in massive disruption, destruction, significant loss of life and, inevitably, in vast civil unrest…………………….Whether people choose to speak about global warming or climate change they are using a metaphor to highlight or deny the impending environmental catastrophe that awaits us if we continue to mine, pollute, pillage and exploit the natural environment………………………In the short term military forces will be seen by many of our friends and neighbours as necessary for their protection. So we will need to explain why we can no longer afford to maintain military forces at anything beyond a sufficient force to repel an aggressor from our shores. During the Cold War, Russia and the US amassed sufficient nuclear weapons to eliminate life as we know it many times over…………………. Depleted uranium is causing the deaths of babies and children in Iraq and Afghanistan………………………War was a ruinous dementia. It silenced law, it killed poets, it exalted the proud, filled the greedy with good things, and oppressed the humble and meek; no good could come of it, it was hopelessly out of date………………Apart from the overt environmental destructive nature of war, there is the environmental cost of just keeping the defence forces mobile……………..If we want to keep the world environmentally healthy then we certainly can no longer afford such profligate military consumption of carbon products. We just need to convince our fellow citizens that it is better to have a world at peace rather than one in pieces, because as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote “the real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.”

‘Peace won’t cost the earth’ but it might save the environment – On Line Opinion – 19/11/2008

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive

November 20, 2008 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized