Hacker News Reader

Not having war is more likely than ecological qualms during one.

> this needs to reach a religious level of fervor, so that it would be unthinkable to put men and machinery into pristine natural environments as part of a strategy of human conflict.

It should be unthinkable to target civilians, destroy houses and people, rape and torture. And here we are, in modern wars.

It would be nice to make it unthinkable to have large organizations of soldiers all about killing, but here we are.

Bret Devereaux is of the opinion that chemical weapons are not in use anymore simply because they're ineffective next to simple explosives.

https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

Maybe the simplest way to save the environment is to invent more deadly, cost effective weapons that don't harm the land as a side effect?

> chemical weapons are not in use anymore

That’s got to be the most caveated statement in a blog post ever.

For anyone reading casually, I really hope you’re aware Russia deployed a chemical weapon against the UK in anger as recently as 2018.

Chemical weapons are used for assassination, but not for large scale warfare. More like terror weapons on civilians (Syria?) and guerilla fighters with limited resources and few alliances.

Someone will still decide to salt the earth with depleted uranium out of spite (see iraq) even if an effective alternative exists

Amount of depleted uranium used in the gulf war: 290 tonnes.

Amount of uranium (twice as radioactive as depleted uranium) in the top 1 meter of the soil of Iraq: ~2.6 million tonnes.

If you own a house with a yard, the soil probably contains multiple kilograms of uranium. It's not that uncommon an element.

> the world needs a Geneva Convention that protects natural habitats in times of war

Don’t we have for example Protocol I of the Geneva Convention and also the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques.

The limitation of the Geneva Convention, and "International Law", is that there is nobody to enforce it, and there never will be. Such is the nature of laws, which are merely the ideas of some people about how other people should conduct themselves. For better or worse, who governs the seas is the outcome of wars.

-- Political Science 101

Right... so how would yet another Geneva Convention fix that?

Nothing will protect natural habitats in times of war, since war is the suspension of the compact of civilisation. The most you could hope for would be that the victors of your next war are environmentalists who are happy to spend whatever it takes to clean up the mess.

This might be an argument in favour of arming Greenpeace.

> The damage caused by war (and industrial exploitation) is horrific. Yet there is precious little literature about the after-effects.

Because the rullers want to be able to justify war everytime they need it. Look in history books accessible to the masses. War is heroic, a fight between good and evil. No indescriminate killing, no destruction, no pollution. Only those who lost were the bad guys and those who win are good ( there are exceptions, see Afganistan and Vietnam for examples).

> For instance, here are articles about two major WW1 battles:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Belleau_Wood

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Delville_Wood

> The battles are described in detail, but the devastation caused to woodland itself - a complex system of soil, vegetation, fauna - is not even an afterthought.

There is also the idea that the effect of the war are punctual in time. In reality war are fought many years after the war officially ends (see bomb findings in europe or china vs taiwan in asia).

> While it's charming that the color of flowers is affected by soil contaminants, the vegetation layer is just the base of the trophic levels that constitute an ecosystem.

> All the other life in the woodland depends on the soil and vegetation. Contamination works its way through the entire ecosystem - definitely not charming.

Yes, but nobody knows about it.

> I've been downvoted many times for my opinions, but the world needs a Geneva Convention that protects natural habitats in times of war. I would go further: this needs to reach a religious level of fervor, so that it would be unthinkable to put men and machinery into pristine natural environments as part of a strategy of human conflict.

Geneva convention does not help. See guantanamo for examples.

> Geneva convention does not help

That's not true, the example of gitmo is an issue of the way that the treaty is worded not covering some situations. There are tons of horrifying things outlawed by the Geneva convention which have not happened since. See for instance the lack of massive battlefield use of chemical weapons in world war 2. The Ottawa treaty has had a similar effect on the use of landmines since.

We've made a lot of progress, don't despair because it's not perfect yet.