Woe is Mother Earth

Here is a very brief but very good summary of the environmental effects of this second Gulf War. Scary, very scary. Excerpt:

"During the Gulf War, retreating Iraqi forces set fire to more than 600 Kuwaiti oil wells, creating toxic smoke that choked the atmosphere and blocked the sun. The Iraqis dumped 4 million barrels of crude oil into the Persian Gulf, tarring beaches, killing more than 25,000 birds and driving millions more away, according to data compiled by the World Resources Institute and other organizations that monitor the environment. Spills of 60 million barrels of oil in the desert formed huge oil lakes and percolated into aquifers.

More than 80 percent of Kuwait's livestock perished during the war, and fisheries were heavily polluted, according to the monitoring groups. The burning oil fields released nearly a half-billion tons of carbon dioxide, an amount of greenhouse gas that many scientists say is the leading cause of the earth's rising temperature.

To date, a dozen nations affected by the Gulf War have submitted environmental damage claims to the United Nations totaling $79 billion. The U.N. has ruled so far on $1.9 billion of the claims, awarding about $1 billion, most of it to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Environmental groups and experts said a new war in Iraq could do even more harm to the region's environment and water resources, and kill off dozens of endangered species of birds and animals.

"The first Gulf War was the biggest environmental disaster in recent history," said Gar Smith, former editor of Earth Island Journal and a spokesman for Environmentalists Against the War. "Unfortunately, with advances in military technology, a new Gulf War has the potential to be even worse."

Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, said in a recent interview with MTV that, "To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war."