While I appreciate the attempt to talk about global warming and global warring on the level of large-scale issues of imperialism and the drive to conquer resources and the people who have inadvertently planted themselves on top of them,  there is also the conduct of war that brings out important environmental issues about how war is conducted on a day to day basis that rarely get talked about.  

It begins with the thousands of military trucks burning dirty diesel fuel are left idling across the entire Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the thousands of other large convoy vehicles that crawl across the dangerous roads carrying supplies to soldiers on far-flung bases.  Fuel is provided at a cost-plus rate by KBR (cost of service plus a fee, meaning it is in KBR's interest to maximize the cost of the product being supplied) and since it is not coming out of the pockets of the drivers, there is no incentive to conserve and military practice is to have trucks running well before the start of a mission and for its entire duration.  As far as KBR is concerned, the more we use, the more they get paid.

Soldiers and contractors alike bathe in water mixed with any number of chemicals to ensure a basic level of purity for personal hygiene.  The chlorine is so pervasive, I can smell it on my skin for hours after taking a shower. Are those chemicals removed before it is returned to whatever source it was pumped from?  I highly doubt it.

The lack of sanitation infrastructure means that much of the human waste is discharged into streets and canals.  I am not an engineer, but the sheer volume of human waste clogging roads and ditches, especially in the cities, can not help but find its way into what few streams and rivers flow in this country.  Beyond the human toll in disease and sickness that the lack of basic services 4 years into this war has caused, there is the environmental toll.

When it comes to drinking water, virtually the only reliable source in Iraq comes from large 1 liter bottles made of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which ironically enough, is made from petroleum.  There are yards full of shipping pallets stacked high with these bottles that are destined, once consumed, to be discarded carelessly either into a trash bin (least likely) or along the side of the road (more likely).  The legacy of trash will scar this land long after the armies of occupation have left.

KBR employees, many of whom are Third Country Nationals (TCNs), use an arsenal of cleaning products during their multiple daily passes of latrines and showers. The ones cleaning our camp don't seem to go through the trouble of diluting the cleaning solution they use, leaving an unbearable toxic cloud behind that leaves the latrine uninhabitable (but supposedly "clean") for hours.  I can't help but think that whatever unpleasantness it may provide us, the daily exposure the workers endure with little or no protective equipment will live with them the rest of their lives.

Fires rage in trash dumps all across the various military bases burning any and all manner of detritus, leaving a toxic smell that can only be the mark of environmentally damaging materials.  A friend of mine was told to have her health records updated with the annotation that she had spent time at a base where a particularly nasty fire raged constantly and there was suspicion that the cloud it produced might be dangerous.

And speaking of trash, imagine 150,000 soldiers and an equal number of contractors, dining on plastic plates or from Styrofoam containers with plastic utensils, and drinking from Styrofoam or paper cups at least three times daily (if not more often).  In the current state of occupation, it is cheaper for a contractor to serve meals on disposable serving ware than take the time and energy to wash plates and silverware.  I suppose the mountains of trash are just used as fuel for the fires.

This is all in addition to the effects of actually war-fighting (think depleted uranium, lead bullets, and other materials from expended munitions).  The mere condition of occupation creates a situation that is rife with ecological destruction and environmental degradation.  Given that there is no oversight (who is going to do an environmental impact study in a war zone?), how are we to know the true extent of just being here is having on the environment locally as well as globally?  

The toll on the people and the society will be deep and lasting, but I fear the environmental impact will be far-more insidious, not least because it goes largely unacknowledged and unreported.

The connections one can explore here are endless. This one is certainly a compelling one! But it also seems rather mind-boggling to contemplate: how can we get the military to halt its obsession with toys that kill?

Living in Canada, it seems to me that people view the role of military somewhat differently. Unfortunately, the idea of "peacekeeping" has been largely abandoned. Nonetheless, very different political environments with respect to war.

ps My other thought was: what is it like to spend one's entire waking life posting absurd, random comments on Grist, such as the one immediately above me? (This is a rhetorical question, by the way.)

pcarbo, I don't think that was random, there is a huge environmental impact to war -- a connection I didn't even mention, but I'm glad ulysseous did.  

I know Americans are probably at at a completely different mind set to just about every other industrialized, or even developing country, because we are the ones with the huge military and long history of twists and turns that led to this state.  So it makes it difficult, even to talk to American environmentalists about cutting back on the military, because we are all embedded in that history.

unless you were talking about bailo there.  Yes, that was random, although not too bad.

About connecting the anti-warring & anti-warming, I find little separation between the neo-con's and their war efforts and the neo-enviro's and their efforts.  

Capture and sequester terrorists to rid the world of terrorism.  Neo-enviro's is worse, capture and sequester carbon to maintain carbon addiction.  Both take billions away from better ways.  

The 1990 soot cap and trade neo-enviro's call a model for carbon turned the US market to Western coal and its worse GHG record since 1990, could be the tipping point to GW meltdown now or soon.  The world may not be so grateful the US breathes easier.

C&S, C&T is not close to being in the anti-war mode that Ted Glick is exemplifying.  NRDC, ED, Sierra Club, etc., the democraps and liars, more represent checkbook elitist whereas the anti-war movement is more populist and without the corporate affiliations, big differences to bridge and not likely in time to mean anything.

Ulysseous,
you have written a fascinating account, on a number of related subjects that the MSM does not really cover at all.

But where are you saying this from?  And who is KBR?

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

Jon,
your reference to Niccolo` Machiavelli is interesting, but perhaps not for the reason that you intended.

Politically, there is no such nation as "the Italians."  They have never been united, and they have more often than not been their own worst enemies.  Certainly they were not united, from the Middle Ages into the Modern period; and even now, though Italy has been formally united since the late 19th century, the inter-civic and inter-regional rivalries remain terrific and often genuinely destructive.

And so, politically, the place of Italy in the 16th century was not at all like that of the US today.  True, the Venetians and the Genoese had mercantile empires, possessing numerous islands and coastal ports in the eastern Mediterranean (Shakespeare's Othello is the Venetian governor of Cyprus), and Venice was probably the richest city of Western Europe; but they were increasingly thwarted and expelled by the Ottoman Turks.  And so far from any of the Italians' being able to exert a dominating military presence anywhere outside of Italy, Italy itself became the battleground for the invading armies of the King of France, the King of Spain, and the Holy Roman Emperor.  And when rule of Spain and the Empire were united in the person of the Habsburg Charles V, most of the Italians had no choice but to toe the Habsburg line.

That was the context in which Machiavelli wrote "Il Principe."  He was hoping to inspire an aristocratic Italian freedom-fighter to rise up and create a strong Italian state (within limits, perhaps: at least a strong north-central Italian state) that could hold its own against the interfering French, Spanish and Germans.  That was the good "end," in the attainment of which all means were justifiable.

Yes, he did not like mercenaries.  And as a Florentine statesman and patriot, he was very proud that during his city's relatively brief post-Medicean, post-Savonarolan, rather heroic period of republican self-government, the symbolic monument of which is Michelangelo's "David," the Florentines raised an army of their own citizens.

But just about all the countries of Europe used mercenaries to some extent.  The Italians' problem was that they tended to use mercenaries a lot, and often exclusively, with the result that a shift in the loyalty of a mercenary captain could have hugely destabilizing consequences.

(The Swiss, those peace-loving, ever-neutral makers of chocolate and cuckoo-clocks, were much sought-after as mercenaries.  Their pikemen were among the most formidable warriors on the continent.  The popes of Rome, who besides wielding spiritual authority, such as it was, were also sovereigns of a largish territory in central Italy, a disgraceful blemish in the history of the Catholic Church, always made sure to hire Swiss mercenaries.  And even today, the quaint, picturesque, blue-and-yellow-striped Swiss Guards are a popular photo-target for tourists visiting the Vatican, prettified vestiges of the bad old days.)

So I am not sure that the mercenaries that Machiavelli and his contemporary Italians had to deal with were quite analogous to the dodgy private contractors that US businesses and the State Department have kept by their side in Iraq, as baleful as their presence there has been.

ON THE OTHER HAND, there may be a more profound sense in which 16th-century Italy and the US today are similar.  During the Renaissance, the Age of Humanism and the period when the first great publishing houses were established (in Venice and Florence, though it had been Germans who first used the East-Asian invention of the printing press to write a European language, Latin), Italy was the cultural leader and model for all Europe.  And so is the US today, however much that may be resented in some quarters elsewhere.  And I do not mean only in popular culture, as important as that is.  But in all the arts, and in higher education, not least in the sciences and the various kinds of technology and engineering, the US has been the place to be.  At least till lately.

And what happened then to the Italians might suggest some forecast of our own future.

Note how during the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centuries, a handful of Italians led the first expeditions across the Atlantic to the Americas, under the flags of Atlantic European countries, Spain, England and France: the Genoese Cristoforo Colombo of course, sailing for Spain; the Venetians Giovanni and Sebastiano Caboto, the first sailing for England to the Maritime Provinces, the latter sailing for Spain to the Rio de la Plata; the Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano, sailing for France, hero of Staten Island and Brooklyn, and supremely generous nourisher of the Bahamians; and last but not least, the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci, who somehow was able to give his name to the whole spread.  (The Europeans, being Europeans, evidently were too "advanced" to appreciate the charming Iroquoian name for the place, Turtle Island.)  Not one of those unspeakably important contributions to history directly enriched or empowered either Italian people or Italian states.

Note also that around a century later, the Florentine Galileo Galilei made colossal advances in physics, astronomy and cosmology.  But almost at once, further progress could only be made in Northern Europe.  Whether that had to do with the Church's censuring of Galileo, or with other social and economic reasons, the historians of science can say.  In fact, the University of Padova, near Venice, had been the place to study natural science; but it grew less and less relevant.

Still, a cultural nostalgia and reverence surrounded Italy, its ruins, monuments and works of art; and into the Edwardian period at least, it was an important part of the rich Northern European's, Russian's and North American's education, to spend a decent period of time in Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples.  Doing Paris, the Alps and Italy was called the "Grand Tour."

Let us not be too surprised if something like that happens to the US.  Our form of Italian-like disunity is the way various traditional kinds of authority here, in politics, business, finance, religion, etc., crushingly resist forces of change and improvement which might challenge their interests.  It is no wonder, really, that the fastest trains are in Japan and Europe, and that there is little chance that anything like them will be built here.  It is no wonder that the biggest and tallest and fanciest new buildings in the world are being built in East Asian cities and the Persian Gulf states -- they are hideous for the most part, it is true, but nevertheless.

Chevron's new line of ads says something bright and boastful like, "Imagine that: an oil company is part of the solution!"  Even if that were true, why should it be a surprise?  It was obvious back in the 1970s, when a few excited people were starting to talk about solar energy, but nothing really was happening, that nothing was ever going to happen with developing renewable alternative energy sources unless and until the petroleum companies had figured out how they might profit from it.

US workers in embryonic stem-cell research have found jobs in labs overseas.  Is that a temporary scientific brown-out, to be lifted once the Bushies leave office?  Or are more and more researchers sensing that there will always be a malignant atmosphere here, with religious conservatives inspecting everything?

I appreciate your vision, Jon, of "an economy that is humming on all cylinders."  But I am afraid I just do not see it happening.  We are too much like 16th-century Italians: our circumstances are overwhelmingly dismal, and we are too disunited to help ourselves.

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

I'm flattered that there are now two excellent comments on this post.  Ulysseous, you should seriously consider writing up what you have seen and submitting it somewhere -- here, common dreams, perhaps -- for serious distribution, it's a very important perspective.

CC, I'm glad we could discuss early Modern northern Italy, it's a wonderful subject matter.  Toynbee pointed out that what often happens is that the "top" societies tend to be so wealthy that they fight among themselves -- ancient Greece and Macchiavelli's Italy being the prime examples -- and the "less" advanced societies on their borders, more unified and learning from their squabbling "superiors", come in and pick off the top dogs one by one.  The U.S. is actually more an example, at least historically, of the second case -- even de Tocqueville thought the US and Russia would someday be the greatest powers.

Since my dissertation was on the subject of the rise and decline of great powers, I could certainly go on (and on), but I see the problem in the US not being so much the disunity -- which bedevils any nation this size -- but, as I touched on in my post, the "normal" progression that great manufacturing (sometimes commerce) leads to great wealth, which leads to empire as well as the concentration of wealth in a very few hands, who are then able to keep grabbing more and more wealth (a vicious cycle), until the country is bankrupted -- and I think some of the Italian city-states quite possibly went through some of those stages as well.

...the term 'connecting the dots' from the previous commenter, Jonathan M. Feldman.  But the sociology of ideas would be another post...

Yes, I was talking about Mr. Bailo there. We must've sent comments at the same time. Sorry 'bout that.

Hope this isn't too much of a tangent but . . .
I'm familiar with the decline of manufacturing in the US, but how has that effected manufacturing for the military industrial complex specifically?  I'm under the impression that as far as the military is concerned manufacturing is doing fine.  Have they started outsourcing production and manufacturing for arms, tanks, etc., like the Volvos you suggest? Politicians (regardless of party) seem to be more inclined to keep that type of manufacturing local, no matter what the cost, as it keeps their constituents happy by artificially inflating the local economy at the expense of the environment and social programs that could actually benefit society.
So, I guess I'm a little surprised by your prediction of an outsourced military industrial complex.
How would you go about converting the current military manufacturing sector?  There's no political will and more importantly, there's no economic incentive on their part - which seems to be all they care about in the end.  

at least that's what I heard a few years back, when Congresspeople were called Seymour Melman and complaining that the Pentagon wanted to raise the maximum allowable outsourced percentage of defense manufacturing projects from 50%, no small potatos, to something like 65%.  I don't know if that came to pass.

Also, I remember a few years back when the makers of Airbus lost a bunch of money because the value of the dollar went down, because they sold billions of dollars of stuff to the Pentagon -- I think they sold on the order of $20 billion at the time.

On top of that, I believe that all lcd displays, as in laptops, come from the East Asia, even the ones in fancy-shmancy fighter jet cockpits, etc.  

So to answer you're question, the Pentagon is just as stupid as the rest of corporate America.