Two items I've been tracking while away for a blissful two weeks of vacation here on the Atlantic shore, one hopeful, one awful:
Hopeful: Ecuador is poised to grant rights to nature and ecosystems in a referendum this month. The idea originated in the U.S. -- in Pennsylvania -- as some small towns fought odious land uses like hog farms. Some language from the proposal is here. Rest assured that oil companies busily fouling Ecuadoran forests are not in favor.
Awful: Both the Russians and Georgians have admitted to using cluster bombs in South Ossetia. This is a disaster for the people (80 percent of cluster bomb casualties are civilians) and the place (war is usually hard on an ecosystem, no?). Add to that the probable long-term effect of decreased regional food security: unexploded bomblets often keep farm fields off-limits for long periods. Check the Survivor Corps site for more on this ugly fact from the conflict in Georgia.
City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks
Is Bill McKibben right to be angry with Obama?
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Russ Posted 6:12 am
03 Sep 2008
This makes me think of William O. Douglas and his efforts to enshrine ecological values in law.
For example:
[edit] Trees Have Standing
In the landmark environmental law case, Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972), Justice Douglas famously, and most colorfully argued that "inanimate objects" should have standing to sue in court:
The critical question of "standing" would be simplified and also put neatly in focus if we fashioned a federal rule that allowed environmental issues to be litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers and where injury is the subject of public outrage. Contemporary public concern for protecting nature's ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation. This suit would therefore be more properly labeled as Mineral King v. Morton.
He continued:
"Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole - a creature of ecclesiastical law - is an acceptable adversary and large fortunes ride on its cases . . . . So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes - fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it."
As for cluster bombs, those are an American favorite as well.
It's ironic, given how American arrogance and hypocrisy vis Kosovo has contributed so heavily to Russian revanchism, that I can recall an atrocity from the Kosovo war, where America dropped cluster bombs on a Belgrade suburb.
I remember they lied saying the target was some nearby structure - but cluster bombs are anti-personnel, not much good vs. structures.
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Erik Hoffner Posted 7:35 am
03 Sep 2008
The PA story is indeed a good one, and the grassroots group in question is the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, http://www.celdf.org
Here's what they're all about:
ON SEPTEMBER 19, 2006, the Tamaqua Borough of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, passed a sewage sludge ordinance that recognizes natural communities and ecosystems within the borough as legal persons for the purposes of enforcing civil rights. It also strips corporations that engage in the land application of sludge of their rights to be treated as "persons" and consequently of their civil rights. One of its effects is that the borough or any of its residents may file a lawsuit on behalf of an ecosystem to recover compensatory and punitive damages for any harm done by the land application of sewage sludge. Damages recovered in this way must be paid to the borough and used to restore those ecosystems and natural communities.
According to Thomas Linzey, the lawyer from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund who assisted Tamaqua Borough, this ordinance marks the first time in the history of municipalities in the United States that something like this has happened. Coming after more than 150 years of judicially sanctioned expansion of the legal powers of corporations in the U.S., this ordinance is more than extraordinary--it is revolutionary. In a world where the corporation is king and all forms of life other than humans are objects in the eyes of the law, this is a small community's Boston tea party.
Taken from the Orion magazine article, "If Nature Had Rights" :
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/5 ...
CELDF runs 'democracy schools' all over the country to help community activists confront corporate power.
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more
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d13vk Posted 7:56 am
03 Sep 2008
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wiscidea Posted 8:16 am
03 Sep 2008
Politics or international politics are too general.
I was wondering about the intense bombardment of Afghanistan and Iraq. How much damage was done to rare species or ecosystems? And lobbing grenades into every cave a person finds can't be very good for large carnivores like bears.
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Erik Hoffner Posted 10:26 am
03 Sep 2008
Me too, Wisci.
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more
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Tasermons Partner Posted 10:50 am
03 Sep 2008
Whether or not it's bad from an ecological standpoint would depend on the circumstances.
In the Georgia situation for example, many villages have benn abandoned, and the Russians now maintain a 4-mile wide "buffer zone" around South Ossetia, as well as another break-away province.
Other than a few checkpoints, that 4-mile wide buffer zone is virtually a no-man's land. The villages inside will no be repopulated anytime soon, and Nature will soon take over.
Similar effects are seen in the 30-mile wide "neutral zone" between North and South Korea, which houses some of the last remainin' populations of plants and animals that are almost extinct outside the zone due to development.
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wiscidea Posted 11:49 am
03 Sep 2008
As E. O. Wilson has pointed out, however, it would be relatively inexpensive to create several "DMZs" that might protect, I think, some 90% of species from extinction. Much less expensive than fighting wars.
Anyway...
I suppose there are other "advantages" of war. You've got your technological and medical advances. And I suppose it reduces population pressure on the environment. But, geez, couldn't we just invest directly in the good things?
Why are we motivated to invest in new technology and medical research -- otherwise referred to as "subsidizing businesses that can't succeed in the free market" -- only when there is an opportunity to kick some ass and kill innocent bystanders?
Hey, Republicans, wouldn't it me more cost-effective and more profitable to just invest, as a civilization, in ensuring people get adequate food, shelter, clothing, and education? Skip the war. Jump to the Marshal Plan. Lower overhead and more future customers!
What might have happened if we would have helped rebuild Afghanistan after the Russians left instead of abandoning them?
There would likely be two additional towers standing in New York, several thousand additional Americans still alive, no Bin Laden encouraging attacks on the U.S., hundreds of thousands of Iraqis still alive, a U.S. military the Russians wouldn't dare challenge, a budget surplus, tax cuts for everyone... but no excuse for builing a police state... oh... I get it.
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mreinbold Posted 2:20 pm
03 Sep 2008
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mreinbold Posted 2:22 pm
03 Sep 2008
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Tasermons Partner Posted 10:28 am
04 Sep 2008
True, but ya haveta figure...would they?
If it were peacetime, would they devote the time, energy, and money into such things when they could just develop the area instead? Usually, the answer is no.
several thousand additional Americans still alive, no Bin Laden encouraging attacks on the U.S., hundreds of thousands of Iraqis still alive,
That's another thing. From a humanitarian standpoint, war is of course bad since it causes so much death.
However, death can also be equated to population control. If several hundred thousand people die, then lookin' at it from an entirely non-emotional or non-sentimental perspectyive, that several hundred thousand people who aren't consumin' resources or emitting pollution.
Assuming that the resources that went into the war (and thus the killing of the people) was less than what those people (or any future offspring) would have consumed had they remained alive, then the overall net benefit to the environment and natural resources is most likely positive.
...but that's only if emotions, sentiments, and morals aren't involved.
So yes, war is still bad.
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Storm Dragon Posted 5:32 pm
04 Sep 2008
The tragic war in Lebanon two years ago created a disastrous oil spill in the Mediterranean. Land mines in parts of southern Africa have killed large numbers of elephants, buffalo, and other large animals. I am told that during the siege of Sarajevo, most, (if not all), of the trees in the city were cut down.
The hardships and social disruption caused by war create a climate that favors the destructive exploitation of natural resources (poaching, deforestation, etc.). Even at the best of times, wars and preparation for war tend to have a chilling effect on efforts to protect the environment-when we focus our energy and resources on new and better ways to kill each other, there isn't much left over for saving the whales and the condors.
The tragic events of September 11th, 2001 were disastrous from an ecological, as well as a human viewpoint. Not only was there the pollution associated with the destruction of the World Trade Center, but this appalling crime was used to justify further destructive and polluting actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to further the whole "War on Terror" mentality, and idiotic legislation such as the REAL ID Act, which, (among other things), gravely undermines our ability to protect wild places wild creatures clean air, or clean water.
In the name of national security, we are endangering whales, and other creatures of the deep, with experimental sonar, and we are building a wall on our southern border, which, (if completed), will destroy unique wilderness areas, and diminish and impoverish our nation's fauna.
I could go on-but I think I've made my point. The argument that wars serve to control the human population might have carried some weight in the days when we fought with arrows and spears, but things are different now. Our dirty little wars may reduce the human population to some extent, but they could very well cause the extinction of species less numerous and widely distributed than our own.
Consider this: If we humans would just co-operate, we might be able to find our way out of the mess we're in. If we keep on bickering, and waging war, is that likely to happen?
Let the jaguars return!
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wiscidea Posted 11:35 pm
04 Sep 2008
Perhaps it has all been covered here, but when I went to the list of topics so I could focus my reading efforts on the issue for a bit I had trouble finding it. Perhaps the Grist editors simply have to tag the articles to improve their index. I don't know.
One could also discuss the direct opposite, how ecological disasters result in wars. Again, maybe they covered this. I have not look for the information... not criticizing Grist... sort of free-associating right now. But if a brighter light was shined on the connection between environmental degradation and violent conflict, the voting public might recognize a more personal benefit of protecting Earth's ecosystems. Help people conserve their local biodiversity and ecosystem services and they might be less inclined to lash out against their neighbors.
war destroys local ecology >>> loss of local ecology leads to war >> war destroys more >> cycle repeats until globed is covered with a sheet of glass
Just babbling I suppose. I hope this issue has been covered here. Sorry if I missed it.
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