In the past century, more than 200 wars
have ravaged our planet. The military's impact on climate change,
on the environment is significant and cannot be ignored. Radioactive waste was everywhere
and wherever they dropped it, that's where it stayed. When push comes to shove,
the national security mission trumps concern for the environment. The cost of doing nothing outweighs
the cost of doing something. What are the ecological consequences
of the military's special status? What is the impact
of warfare on the environment? In the winter of 1916,
more than one million French and German soldiers
clash near the French town of Verdun. On February the 21st at 8:12 AM, the sound of steel thunder
fills the countryside. Once the day's battle is over,
nine hours and 12 minutes later, the norms of modern battle
have changed forever. The century of war can now begin. In a single day,
the Germans fired two to 300,000 shells from 1,300 artillery positions. These were immense volumes. The world had never seen anything
like it before. In the hills around Verdun,
each side seeks to bleed out the enemy, an objective that the German
and the French armies pursue with all the means
available to them. Nature has nothing to defend itself
against the machinery of war, and the machinery is just getting started. Verdun will later become an emblem
of industrialized warfare. The order from the French command
is as simple as it is fatal. ils ne passeront pas, they shall not pass. The French are instructed not to surrender
a single meter to the enemy. By the end of the battle, nothing remains of this historically
rich region in northern France. The main area of battle, the Zone Rouge
is still a death trap today. For decades, only scrub oaks grew here. The land is riddled
with leftover munitions and unexploded bombs. For 10 months,
the battle wages concentrated in an area no larger than 40 square kilometers. Life itself becomes just
another resource of war. There is so much fighting,
soldiers must work in shifts. The barrage of artillery is constant. The battlefield
is a gruesome place of work. Never before had so many soldiers
been killed in so small an area. Shellshock was rampant
among the survivors. It is a historical turning point, one with fatal consequences
for man as well as for nature. There was nothing left here,
no soil, no humus, absolutely nothing. Just imagine there was nothing but stones. The humus was no longer on the surface
because having been under constant fire, it had been repeatedly re-spread. How then could anyone possibly
have got through with a plough here or with anything else for that matter? This was really no longer possible
and it would never again be leveled, neither the totally destroyed forests
nor the fields. No single square meter remained untouched. There was nothing but shell craters. To protect themselves, soldiers dig trenches
through the countryside. They have less and less contact
with their enemies. Man-to-man combat is no longer
in keeping with the times. What counts now are the range
and destructive force of the artillery shells. The defining mark of World War I
is that you don't see the enemy. Death comes from five
to 10 kilometers away. You can't leave the trench either because the opponent's weapons
will kill you as soon as you raise as much as your helmet. The hill named the Dead Man Le Mort Homme
earns a sad notoriety. The enemy positions there
are shelled so relentlessly that the hill loses 10 meters in height
by the end of the battle. Verdun serves as a test lab
for modern weapons of mass destruction. It marks the first time that poison gas
is used in artillery shells. It allows toxic chemical agents to be delivered more accurately
to enemy lines, killing everyone in their path. Inconceivable numbers of munitions
are sent to the front line. The supply seems endless. This changes the nature of warfare. Earlier battles lasted only a few days
before men and ammunition were consumed. This time,
there's no end to the fresh supply. It permits military leaders
to rely on a new strategy, constant fire. All in all,
both sides launch a combined total of more than 60 million shells. The battle can be described
as the most intensive form of resource consumption imaginable. What was new about World War I
and what happened again in World War II was a reorganization
of each side's industrial production. Now, they were able to compensate
for the massive consumption of resources. The shift to a war economy
allows production numbers that were unthinkable in the 19th century. By the end of the war,
just as many munitions are produced each month
as were available in total when the war broke out. Whoever wants to wage war now
must rely on industrial power at home. This provided a lesson
because technological advances continue, and because we can't predict the next war,
we now produce arms for their own sake. Not only to ensure military supplies
in the long run, but also to stay permanently innovative. Within decades, the world has armed itself
to the brink of complete annihilation. In the Second World War, bomber fleets can set whole cities
ablaze within minutes. Planes carpet bomb large swathes of land, dropping enormous amounts
of ordnance in the process. After the war ends,
millions of tons of munitions become unusable from one day to the next. It is the largest overproduction
in history. On Canada's eastern seaboard,
off the coast of Nova Scotia, lies one of the main ocean routes
between Europe and North America. This gives the region great importance
for the military, especially during the World Wars. Here, warships were once loaded with arms
from giant munitions arsenals. Right now, we're at Rent Point
in the Bedford Basin in Halifax. On July 26th, 1945, Canada
had the third-largest navy in the world. They were coming back
from the Second World War and they were offloading
all the munitions here at the basin. What we have here today
is the basin is just full of munitions. All the land sites
are full of munitions as well. Ammunition storage after World War II
found little support among the population. Here at Bedford Bay in Halifax,
there had already been an enormous explosion
during the First World War. After another major incident
occurred in 1945, something had to happen. The idea here is
to get a better understanding of the type of munitions
are on the bottom, how many are there,
what kind of state they're in. Then from then, we can actually look
at the different information and determine what needs to be done. After World War II was over, the military had to find a solution
for its dangerous old ordnance. It found one right in front of its nose. When these munitions corrode
and the casing comes off them, in a lot of them,
you're left with stuff like TNT, high explosive, which is a carcinogen. Now you have that carcinogen
laying on the bottom of the ocean, which will continually put stuff
into the environment like that for the next thousand years. The pollutants spread
in the marine ecosystem and endanger marine life, along with the people
who rely on the ocean for food. It's personal to me
because I come from Cape Breton, and we are basically a marine community
that rely on our mainstay from the ocean. We eat the fish from there,
and we do have a high cancer rate here, right across the province in Nova Scotia. Terry Long was an explosives expert
in the Canadian military. He has removed
and defused thousands of mines. His expertise is sought after
all over the world. Long spent more than two decades
in crisis zones. Eventually,
the risk becomes too much for him. After he returns to Canada,
he seeks out less dangerous work. He finds a job exploring ocean floors
for oil firms. Yet soon his past catches up with him. He discovers hundreds of munition sites
at the bottom of the ocean. All these different dots we're seeing
along here are actual munition sites which are full of munitions
or shipwrecks that contain munitions. There's approximately
3,000 documented sites, and these are the ones
that we looked at and documented, but we believe we found half of them. We still believe
there's another 3,000 out there. Terry Long estimates
that as many as one million tons of munitions were dumped
off the coast of Nova Scotia. Finding them isn't easy. Only a portion of the dumping sites
were documented, and it is not always certain
what the munitions contain. It is a problem
that is well-known in Europe. On September 1st, 1939, the Second World War
began here at the Bay of Gdansk. Today, Polish scientists
are searching for chemical weapons. There is no recorded information
about their exact whereabouts. Accordingly, scientists must use sonar
to scour the ocean floor meter by meter. For several years now,
similar time-consuming searches have been taking place
throughout the Baltic Sea. A complete sweep of the Bay of Gdansk
alone will take decades. It's like looking for a needle
in a haystack. Every time something suspicious appears, the ship stops
and scientists investigate the spot with a camera submarine. You can see there is no bacteria around,
it's black. It should be white. It could be that you've got contamination
of this area and bacteria is not growing. Scientists are not certain
about the effects of the chemical agents on the sensitive marine ecosystem. Samples taken of the sediment
will later show that toxic compounds
have already leached into the ocean floor. One of the alarming news we received
estimating the rate of corrosion. There should be a corrosion maximum
releasing the toxins to an environment about 60 years
past the World War II era for bombs and something
like 110 for artillery shells. As for the bombs, it's about now. The study of the impending catastrophe
has just begun, but early findings
have brought disturbing news. Animals that live in areas
close to dumping sites have alarmingly
high rates of fatal disease. The ocean is a continuum. If we put something there,
even at great depths, it will eventually find a way
to hit you in the back. There's enough cyanide,
Adam site, mustard gas, and tabun in the oceans
off the coast of Europe to obliterate all life on Earth. Between Ireland and Scotland,
250,000 tons of chemical weapons are rotting away in a gigantic dump. One hundred and fifty thousand tons
of weapons were dumped in the Barents Sea and the Kara Sea. It's a ticking global time bomb. Scientists believe that toxic chemicals
off Canada's eastern seaboard have already made their way
into the food chain. The effects on the people
who eat the local seafood have yet to be studied. Terry Long's investigations
turn up something else. He traveled to Washington
to find out exactly where munitions were dumped. In the archive of the Pentagon,
he stumbled upon documents that he believes he was not meant to see. The documents were open to me,
I was allowed to go via the archives. There was one in particular
that showed 30 tonnes of special weapons, which is the US designator
for nuclear weapons leaving the Port of Virginia
and being dumped somewhere on the way to Nova Scotia. -What happens with it now?
-Nothing. Terry Long copied the logbook of the ship
that did the dumping. Authorities at the Pentagon are shocked when they find out
which documents he has uncovered. 12:46 mustered all dumping team, 12:53 commence dumping
of special weapons, 13:15, completed dumping,
offloaded 30 tons of special weapons. I just simply copied the documents
and took them. Then what happened? When I got it… I can't say this on film. I can't say that. No, I can't say anything more
than what I just said. Nothing changes the 20th century more
than the invention of the nuclear bomb. Humanity now has a weapon
with which it can destroy the world. Whoever possesses it is invincible. In my view,
the standardization of action on ethical, security or legal grounds
is much more difficult in the military than in civilian life. In civilian life,
we administer prosperity. In the military,
there's a different logic. They are permitted to do an action
because they can do it, or because they must be able to do it,
because the other side can do it too. The moment we're unwilling
to do the possible, we have already lost. Since the beginning of the nuclear age, around 2,000 bombs
have been detonated for testing purposes. From the Arctic to the South Seas,
thousands of square kilometers have been turned
into uninhabitable wastelands. Radiation from the blast
is directly responsible for some 400,000 cancer fatalities. Gary MacAlister is the founder
of a new scientific field, warfare ecology. The biologist has systematically
investigated the effects of military actions on the environment. The 20th century is a time where warfare preparations,
violent conflict, and what happens after war
all defined as warfare, has had a significant impact
on the environment. It's an environmental problem
that we have to deal with in the 21st century that emanates from the industrialized war
of the 20th century. The nuclear arms race
shapes the dynamics of the Cold War. The destructive force
of nuclear technology is not the only reason
why it attracts the military's attention. The enormous amounts of energy it releases
make it a perfect fuel. The nuclear submarine fleets
of the superpowers are some of the most prestigious objects
of the Cold War. The USSR has the largest fleet by far. During the height of the Cold War,
around one-fifth of the world's nuclear reactors
are used by the submarines of the notorious Northern Fleet. The dangers they hold are top secret until a former submarine officer
goes public. Alexander Nikitin was a chief engineer
on a Soviet nuclear submarine. In 1994, he helped prepare a report
on an environmental catastrophe in the North. He was arrested and tried as a traitor. The judge said, I am the judge. That is the defense lawyer
and that is the criminal, and he is going to prison. He said this immediately after my arrest. Until then, no one had dared to talk about the Soviet Union's
shocking environmental neglect. Nikitin's report described one of the largest
nuclear waste scandals in history. During the Cold War, seven new nuclear submarines
are launched on average per year. The fuel rods have to be replaced
at regular intervals. This creates toxic waste. Over 10 years, a single submarine
generates up to 200 cubic meters of radioactive waste. Some of that ends up in the ocean. That was the usual procedure. When I served on submarines, Russia had yet
to sign any treaties banning the dumping of radioactive waste in oceans and seas. Everyone was fine with that. No one objected
when we dumped radioactive waste in the coral sea. No one knows how much radioactive material
was discharged in the ocean. No records were kept. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, much of the fleet
was decommissioned and scrapped. No one knew what was supposed to happen
to the submarines once they were scrapped. No one had thought they'd ever come a time
when the ships had to be scrapped. There were no documents, no regulations. I personally wrote the first guidelines
for disposing of a nuclear reactor. His case was of signal importance. In 2000, after multiple appeals
on the part of the prosecution, he became the first
and so far only person in Russia to be fully acquitted
of charges brought by the FFSB, Russia's state security service. Nikitin continued his investigative work
from Norway, which in the north borders Kola Peninsula,
the home of the Russian Northern Fleet. Only 20 kilometers away
from Russia's border with Norway is the top-secret, Andreeva Bay. No one knows
how contaminated the site really is and how much radioactive material
has leaked into the ground. Radioactive containers
have stood open here for decades. We believe that Andreeva Bay,
where spent nuclear fuel is stored, is the most dangerous
nuclear waste disposal site in the world. It's a time bomb just waiting to go off. During war,
strength is given the highest priority. Fear of the enemy's superiority
pushes worries about the disposal
of radioactive waste into the background. The ecological costs
for the coastal waters off Norway and Russia
are regarded as collateral damage. From the military's perspective, the environment isn't important
until it assumes strategic significance. That is, the environment isn't important
until it becomes an enemy resource. One battle that raged in northern France
in 1916 produced more casualties than any other battle of World War I. On the first day of fighting alone,
60,000 British soldiers lost their lives. The Battle of the Somme
dwarfed even that of Verdun, and saw the deployment of three times
as many cannons and howitzers. Still today,
around 50 tons of unexploded ordnance and other types of military equipment
are unearthed here each year. After several months, and over a million people killed
or missing, commanders declared a ceasefire. It was soon followed
by a German withdrawal, which was less of a retreat
than a brilliant, if insidious, maneuver. Operation Alberich
set a new gruesome standard for warfare. Whole areas became wastelands. Every village up to the Hindenburg Line
was reduced to piles of rubble. Every tree cut, every street torn up,
every well polluted, burnt, still smoldering wreckage
was the only remnant of the past. Barren, desolate,
a single horrific field of fire as far as the eye could see. The Germans built a buffer zone
between themselves and the enemy. German generals argue that the devastation
would safeguard the withdrawal of soldiers behind the so-called Hindenburg Line. The German High Command
describes in detail what is to be done. At the end, the destruction is total, rendering the region
unusable for the enemy. It is an echo side on a modern scale. The core of Operation Alberich
is a scorched earth policy for a strip of land 20 kilometers wide. The entire area is razed to the ground. The intentional destruction of nature
was no invention of World War I. Reports describe the destruction
of resources in enemy areas as early as antiquity. What is new is its exact planning
and perfect execution, but that too can be outdone. The destructive force of warfare
assumes unheard-of dimensions in Vietnam. The United States drops millions
of tons of bombs on this small country
in Southeast Asia, many times more than the total amount
dropped by all sides in World War II. The escalation of destructive frenzy
is without parallel. All the more so because the opponent
never stands a chance. The weak can survive only
because they have somewhere to hide. Be it the jungle, be it the mountains, all by merging into other populations where the opponent has difficulty
identifying them. Once the enemy is hidden under the cover
of impenetrable camouflage spanning hundreds of square kilometers, the temptation to remove
the camouflage becomes great. The Vietnamese forces
operate under the forest's thick canopy. It is the perfect hiding place
and a strategic advantage that the Americans
are unwilling to accept. To make use of its overwhelming air power, US forces build a network of bases
throughout the country. Over the course of the war, Da Nang becomes one
of the busiest air bases in the world. It is one of the centers
of US aerial operations. The aircraft stationed there
dropped not only bombs, they also drop chemical agents. At first, I thought
they were fighting mosquitoes. They sprayed so often,
I can't even count the times. Sometimes they just dumped it
on the ground. The US military sprays 70 million liters
of defoliant as part of a program
codenamed Operation Ranch Hand. The most notorious herbicide
is Agent Orange, whose name
derives from its orange-colored label. One of its purposes
is to eliminate the vegetation around the main supply route
of the North Vietnamese Army, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, increasing visibility
for US bomber pilots. Operation Ranch Hand continues
for almost 10 years. By the time it's halted,
around 15 percent of Vietnam's ecosystem has been destroyed. The area along the border with Laos used to be one
of the most species-rich regions on Earth. America's herbicide warfare program
permanently changed all that. No one had the faintest idea
of its long-term effects. Many species once lived here, elephants, tigers, monkeys,
even a rare type of water buffalo. The toxins and the bombs
destroyed everything. By October 1974, everything was dead. Not a single living creature survived. Nothing survived. Go Gung Tuk Duc is a researcher at the Hue University
of Agriculture and Forestry. For years, he has been studying the area
around the border with Laos. The destruction was so vast
that he and his colleagues have barely made a dent in their work. Here in our small valley, the footprints of war
are everywhere and unmistakable. According to the chairman of the commune,
a US airbase was once located here. The aircraft here would spray Agent Orange
on the surrounding territory and on Vietnamese military bases. The air base covered
around five and a half hectares. When it rains a lot
or when the sun shines, a very unpleasant odor is emitted. The local authorities believe
that barrels of Agent Orange are still buried somewhere. The US has given local authorities
no information about their whereabouts. They only know that soldiers
here cleaned the spray aircraft and washed out the tanks
that contained Agent Orange. No one knows how much Agent Orange
leached into the ground. A few years ago, the commune chairman
had a barbed wire fence erected and thorn bushes planted
to prevent livestock from drinking out of the bomb craters. After the war, people resettle the region. There are a strikingly high number
of miscarriages. No one knows why. Thirty years will pass
before the residents first hear about dioxin. In the meantime,
they continue to draw their drinking water directly from the rivers. Zoologists at the Vietnam
National University in Hanoi have been studying the war's effects
on animal life for four decades. During this time,
they have made some startling discoveries. In 1980,
while working in Thua Thien Hue Province, I came across a water buffalo
with two heads. The agent that caused
this animal's deformity is the same
that causes deformities in human beings. Many people in Vietnam who live
in regions contaminated by toxic chemicals have conjoined twins
or children with two heads. It's no different with animals. The water buffalo here
is just one example. I have also seen pigs and cows
with two heads. It really took me by surprise. It is an extremely
bizarre effect of dioxin. Around three million Vietnamese
were directly exposed to Agent Orange. It remains unknown how many of them have suffered
long-term effects from exposure to dioxin. She fought on Hamburger Hill and was unable
to keep an eye on her daughter. She took her daughter with her
because she was still nursing. She couldn't leave her alone. Then a plane came
and unloaded Agent Orange. The little one was fully covered
with the substance. She's been paralyzed ever since. Researchers were in the dark for decades. They didn't understand
the mechanism of the toxin and were unable to detect it. The trees in this area were all killed. The first time I understood
that herbicide killed the trees, it was a surprise for me, because it's different from the info
we received from the US. There is only one laboratory
in all of Vietnam equipped to handle the compound. As little as a few trillionth
of a gram of dioxin can have toxic effects. That's like one drop
in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Researchers here are studying samples
taken from the border area with Laos to find out how high dioxin
has reached on the food chain. We analyzed dioxin in fish and in people
living nearby who eat the fish. We found very,
very high dioxin concentrations in their blood. I think some of the highest concentrations
in the world. On the former grounds of Da Nang Air Base, officials are trying to remove
the toxic compound from the environment. Excavators remove
the top layer of sediment and place it
in a gym-sized containment structure, where a thermal treatment system
will break down dioxin's chemical bonds. The project is being supported
by the United States, a sign of an emerging sense
of responsibility for its military actions. Forty years have passed
since Operation Ranch Hand was halted, and scientists are still finding traces
of the toxin in the ecosystem. Even now,
several generations after the war, dioxin is still being passed
through blood and breast milk. The consequences have been terrible, especially for those
who never experienced the war. Dioxin changes a cell's genetic makeup and interrupts chemical signals
between cells. Its molecular structure is so similar
to naturally occurring hormones that the body
is unable to tell them apart. Whenever dioxin is mistaken for a hormone, chaos erupts
in the neurotransmission system, with devastating consequences
for the body. The Vietnamese have yet
to receive compensation from the United States. The same does not apply to Americans
exposed to Agent Orange. Like the Vietnamese,
US soldiers had no idea of its dangers. Each year, the US government
hands out 13 billion dollars to help veterans of the Vietnam War. Operation Ranch Hand
destroyed an ecosystem with which not only the enemy
but also US soldiers had contact. The destruction reached a point utterly
beyond human control. The use of toxic substances
goes back all the way to Greek times. What is new is 20th-century
industrial chemical production being able to be projected into warfare. Nature has always been collateral damage. The issue increasingly becomes, nature is more fragile
and warfare is more robust and powerful. The use of Agent Orange has since been banned
by international convention, but new technologies for warfare
continue to be developed. Doug Rokke fought in Vietnam. After the war, he studied physics and found work
at the University of Illinois, where he did research for the army. His specialty was analyzing the risk
of chemical and biological warfare. In 1991,
the Pentagon called him out of retirement. They wanted him to go to Iraq. Once your ground war was completed,
they had no idea, and so the Pentagon sent a message
to General Schwarzkopf and said: Fine, Doug Rokke, and the guys,
and tell them to clean up the DU mess. We did. Like the North Vietnamese, the Iraqis had nothing
to challenge America's air supremacy. The US had a new miracle weapon, a type of ammunition
made with depleted uranium or DU, that was capable of piercing tanks. Depleted uranium is a byproduct
of the nuclear industry. Its half-life
is four-and-a-half billion years. Two properties make it particularly prized
by the military. Because of its very high density,
it can penetrate deeply into a target. It is also pyrophoric, which means that the billions
of dust particles released on impact burn as soon as they enter the air,
unleashing a destructive reign of fire. Saddam's tanks stood no chance. The mission of Doug Rokke and his unit
was to recover tanks contaminated with depleted uranium. They had no idea
what they were getting into. We collected it altogether,
we buried a lot in the desert, and we shipped a lot back to the US that then took over three years
to clean up. After only a few months of work,
some members of the team become sick. They suffer from symptoms
that will soon be known as Gulf War Syndrome. Depleted uranium ammunition is dangerous only after its dust
is released into the environment. These particles are toxic and radioactive. The alpha radiation
reaches only a few centimeters, but this is more than enough
to harm an organism once absorbed into its body. In Iraq alone,
around 3,000 tons of depleted uranium dust are released into the environment. The Pentagon refuses to ban the use
of depleted uranium, however. Instead, they commission investigations to study how to minimize
the dangers it poses to US soldiers. After Major Rokke returns from Iraq,
the Pentagon makes him director of the Army's depleted uranium project and gives him the task
of carrying out these investigations. In the desert of Nevada, Rokke and his team
shoot depleted uranium ammunition at tanks under real-life conditions. Not even protective masks
can prevent tiny particles of uranium from entering the body. Dog Rokke gets sick,
he too suffers from Gulf War syndrome. You can see
all the black DU contamination, incredible amounts. It doesn't settle down,
it goes for incredible distances and the wind has just taken
and blowing it away. The radioactive metals
spreads over vast areas. To decontaminate the land, workers would have to remove
30 centimeters of topsoil in no less than a 100 metre radius
from every round fired, and store it in a special facility. The volumes are absolutely incredible,
it's totally impossible to clean it up. I found out I couldn't do it. We found out we couldn't do it. That scared us. Despite these warnings, the US military
and NATO forces continue to incorporate depleted uranium
in their arsenals. Health reports from sites
where it was used are alarming. In some regions of Iraq, the child mortality rate
increased sixfold. Even in remote mountain regions
in Afghanistan, traces of the toxic metal can be found
in the blood of village residents. Reconstruction in Vietnam
has only just begun. Scientists have recently launched
an ambitious project, reforesting a large tract of land
once covered by thick tropical forest. By planting quick-growing acacia trees, scientists project that a closed canopy
will form in a matter of years, allowing new
tropical undergrowth to emerge. Scientists hope that the toxic compounds
sprayed by the Americans have sunk deep enough into the soil, so as not to affect
the shallow roots of the acacia. I doubt the US forces considered
that the Agent Orange they used against Vietnamese soldiers
might affect them too. It's normal
to deploy guns and bombs in war. When toxic chemicals
like Agent Orange are used, they affect not only soldiers but also later generations. What have they done wrong? Recent developments in the regions
of Vietnam most affected by Agent Orange give some reason for optimism. Even so, it will take decades
before a complex ecosystem can reestablish itself here. For years to come, people everywhere on the planet
will be contending with the ecological consequences
of past military conflicts. Not only this past
burdens the world's environment. The environmental impacts of war
far exceed that during violent conflict. That's why our conception
of warfare ecology begins with war preparations. Just war preparations alone consume
about 15 million square kilometers, six percent of the raw material
used around the world, that makes the militaristic use
of the Earth's resources as a critical component
to overall human use of nature. American military forces alone use
as much oil per year as all of Sweden, making them by far
the world's single largest consumer. During the Iraq War in 2003, the US and its allies
used 30 percent more oil every month than was used
during the whole of World War I. The modern machinery of war
has an insatiable thirst for oil. A jet aeroplane uses as much fuel per hour
as 500 compact cars. At the same time,
an aircraft carrier consumes around as much energy
as a small town does in an entire day. The military is responsible
for around 10 percent of global CO2 emissions. A national security mentality
and the primacy placed on military strength
have freed the armed forces from the kind of environmental awareness
long since found in the civilian sector. In this military training area
in western Germany, soldiers have been
preparing for war for decades. Recently, however,
German forces permitted 100 hectares to be converted into a nature sanctuary. Is this a sign of the military's
budding environmental awareness? Perhaps,
but one exception will always remain war. In a battle, the one who survives is the one
who shoots faster and more effectively. How the forest looks in 10 or 20 years,
what the effects will be on agriculture, whether people will wind up
with deformities are secondary questions
for a military at war. The environmental costs
of war are immense, but as long as armed conflict
remains a viable option, nature will be the one
left footing the bill.
