Scorched Earth: How WAR is destroying Nature and our Livelihoods | ENDEVR Documentary

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 Trump's concern for the environment the cost of doing nothing out waves the cost of doing something what are the ecological consequences of the military's special status what is the impact of Warfare on the [Music] [Music] environment in the winter of 1916 more than 1 million French and German soldiers Clash near the French town of [Music] Verdan on February the 21st at 8:12 a.m. the sound of Steel Thunder fills the countryside once the day's battle is over 9 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 2 to 300,000 shells from 1300 artillery positions these were immense volumes the world had never seen anything like it before in the hills around Verdan 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 Verdan will later become an emblem of industrialized Warfare the order from the French command is as simple as it is fatal IL Pason 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 historic ially Rich region in northern France the main area of battle the zor HJ is still a death trap today for decades only scrub Oaks grew here the land is riddled with leftover Munitions and unexploded [Music] bombs for 10 months the battle wages concentrated in an area no larger than 40 square kilm 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 being killed in so small an area shell shock 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 respread how then could anyone possibly have got through with a plow 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 mantoan 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 5 to 10 kilm 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 lamort earns a sad notoriety the enemy positions there are shelled so relentlessly that the hill loses 10 m in height by the end of the battle [Music] Verdon 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 one 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 comp 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 [Music] 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 s not only to ensure military supplies in the long run but also to stay permanently Innovative um permanent 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 PLS carpet bomb large SES of land dropping enormous amounts of ordinance 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 [Music] 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 imp importance for the military especially during the world [Applause] wars here warships were once loaded with arms from giant Munitions [Music] arsenals right now we're at rent point in the Bedford Basin in Halifax uh in July 26th uh 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 so what we have here today is the Basin is just full of Munitions all all the land sites are full of mition as [Applause] 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 just to get a better understanding of what type of mition are on the bottom how many are there what kind of state they're in and then from that we can actually look at the different information and determine what needs to be [Music] done after World War II was over the military had to find a solution for its dangerous old ordinance and 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 cinogen so now you have that cinogen laying on the bottom of the ocean which will continually put stuff into the environment like that for the next Thousand [Music] 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 uh a marine community that rely on our main stay from the ocean we eat the fish from there and we do have a high cancer rate here right across the province of Nova Scotia Terry long was an explosives expert in the Canadian military he has removed and defused thousands of Minds his expertise is sought after all over the world long spends 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 [Music] ocean so all these different dots you're seeing along here are actual munition sites which are full of Munitions or shipwrecks that contain munitions [Music] there's approximately 3,000 documented sites now these are the ones that we actually looked at and documented but we believe we only found half of them we still believe there's another 3,000 out there Terry long estimates that as many as 1 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 [Music] contain it is a problem that is well known in Europe on September the 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 wearabouts accordingly scientists must use sonar to scour the ocean floor meter by [Music] meter for several years now similar timec 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 hay stack 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 so 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 leeched 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 environment about 60 years past the World War II era for bombs and uh something like 110 for artillery shells so as for the bombs it's about now the study of the impending catastrophe has just begun but early findings have brought disturb ing news animals that live in areas close to dumping sites have alarmingly high rates of fatal disease the ocean is a Continuum uh if you put something there even at Great depths it will eventually find a way to hit you in the back [Music] there's enough cyanide adamite mustard gas and taboon in the oceans of 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 150,000 tons of weapons were dumped in the baron Sea and the Cara sea it's a ticking Global time bomb scientists believe that toxic chemicals of 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 through the archives there was one in particular that showed 30 tons of special weapons which is the ux US designator for nuclear weapons uh leaving the port of Virginia and being dumped somewhere on the way to no Scotia and what happens now with it nothing Terry long copied the log book of the ship that did The Dumping authorities at the Pentagon are shocked when they find out which documents he has uncovered 1246 mustard all dumping team 1253 commenced dumping of special weapons 1315 completed dumping offloaded 30 tons of special weapons I just simply copied the documents and took them and then what happened uh I'm I when I got it uh I I can't say this on film yeah yeah I can't say that no I I can't say that anything more than what I just said nothing changes the 20 th 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 [Applause] Gary mes 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 makes 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 1 fth of the world's nuclear reactors are used by the submarines of the notorious Northern Fleet the dangers they hold a 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 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 RADS have to be replaced at regular intervals this creates toxic waste over 10 years a single submarine generates up to 200 cubic M 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 dumped radioactive waste in the car [Music] SE no one knows how much radioactive material was discharged in the ocean no records were kept after the disolution 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 there'd ever come a time when the ships had to be scrapped there were no docents no regulations I personally wrote the first guidelines for disposing of a nuclear reactor his case was of signal important 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 FSB Russia's State security service nikitin continued his investigative work from Norway which in the north borders Cola Peninsula the home of the Russian Northern Fleet only 20 kilm away from Russia's border with with Norway is the top secret Andrea Bay no one knows how contaminated the site really is and how much radioactive material has leaked into the [Music] ground radioactive containers have stood open here for decades we believe that Andrea 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 of 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 Som dwarfed even that of Verdan and saw the deployment of three times as many cannons and howitzers still today around 50 tons of unexploded ordinance and other types of military equipment are Unearthed here each [Music] year after several months and over a million people killed or missing commanders declared to ceasefire it was soon followed by a German withdrawal which was less a retreat than a brilliant if Insidious [Music] 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 wage was the only remnant of the past Barren desolate a single horrific Field of Fire as far as the eye could see the Germans build a buffer zone between themselves and the enemy German generals argue that the devastation will 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 of operation Alish is a scorched Earth policy for a strip of land 20 km wide the entire area is raised 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 [Music] outdone the destructive force of warfare assumes unheard of dimensions in [Music] 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 at 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 tempation 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 Danang becomes one of the busiest air bases in the world it is one of the centers of us aerial operations the aircraft stationed there drop 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 lers of defoliant as part of a program code named 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 POI Min Trail increasing visibility for us bomber Pilots operation ranchhand continues for almost 10 years by the time it's halted around 15% 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 herbicidal Warfare program permanently changed all that no one had the faintest idea of its long-term effect [Music] acts 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 [Music] angor Tong duk is a researcher at the hu University of Agriculture and Forestry for years he has been studying the area around the border with LA the destruction was so vast that he and his colleagues have barely made a dent in their work here in ARA 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 basis the air base covered around 5 and 1 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 Ancient Orange are still buried [Music] somewhere but 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 leeched 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 30 years will pass before the residents first hit about dioxin in the meantime they continue to draw their drinking water directly from the [Applause] rivers zoologists at the Vietnam National University in oi 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 Tua chanhui Province I came across a water buffalo with two heads the agent that caused this animals 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 3 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 H burer 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 completely 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 and the first time I understood that herbicide killed the trees it was a surprise for me because it's different from the information we received from the US from the US there is only one laboratory in all of Vietnam equipped to handle the compound as little as a few trillionths of a gram of dioxin can have toxic effects that's like one drop in an Olympic siiz swimming pool researchers here are studying samples taken from the border area with LA to find out how high dioxin has reached on the food chain we analyze dioxin in Fist and then we analyzed dioxin in fish and in people living nearby who eat the fish so um we found very very high dioxin concentrations in their blood one of the high I think some of the highest concentrations in the world on the former grounds of Danang Airbase 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 dioxins chemical bonds the project is being supported by the United States a sign of an emerging sense of responsibility for its military actions 40 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 te 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 to help Veterans of the Vietnam War operation ranchhand 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 so nature is 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 [Music] Doug Rocky 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 speciality 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 the ground war was completed they had no idea and so the Pentagon sent a message to General Schwarz and said find Doug Rocky and the guys and tell him to clean up the DU mess well 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 UR urum or du that was capable of piercing tanks depleted uranium is a byproduct of the nuclear industry its halflife is 4 and A2 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 rign of fire saddam's tanks stood no chance the mission of Doug Rocky and his unit was to recover tanks contaminated with depleted uranium they had no idea what they were getting into we collected it all together we buried a lot in the desert and we shipped a lot back to the United States that then took over 3 years to clean up after only a few months of work some members of the team become sick they suffer from symptoms that will 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 cenm 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 Rocky 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 NADA Rocky and his team shoot depleted uranium ammunition at tanks under real life condition not even protective masks can prevent its tiny particles of uranium from entering the body dark Rocky gets sick he too suffers from Gulf War syndrome you can see all the black duuc contamination incredible incredible amounts so it doesn't settle down goes for incredible distances and the wind is just taking and blowing it [Music] away the radioactive metal spreads over vast areas to decontaminate the land workers would have to remove 30 cm of top soil in no less than a 100 m radius from every round fired and store it in a special facility so the volumes are absolutely incredible it's totally impossible to clean it up and 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 ing 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 US forces consider that the agent orange they used against Vietnamese soldiers might affect them too it's normal to deploy guns and bombs in war but when toxic chemicals like agent orange are used they affect not only soldiers but also later generations and what have they done wrong [Music] 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 but 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 6% of the raw material used around the world that makes the militaristic use of the Earth's resources as a critical 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% 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 airplane uses as much fuel per hour as 500 compact cars in the same time an air aircraft carrier consumes around as much energy as a small town does in an entire day the military is responsible for around 10% 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 [Music] 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 a secondary questions for a military at [Music] 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 [Music] [Music] bill [Music]

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Id: KofL24c4Uec

Length: 52min 21sec (3141 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 03 2024