Environment or Terror?

So Kenny asked me which is a higher priority to me. Terrorism or the environment.

For me the environment is more important. It is a higher priority for many reasons. I will name several but only explain a few. More people will die from environmental reasons that from terrorism.

Economic, political, justice, health. I will address biodiversity in another post.

Let me take the last and most obvious one first. Clean air, clean water, clean soil.

Air pollution has been implicated in many health problems from various cancers and lung diseases, to asthma. This should be enough to make people want to clean up their act. More people will die from air pollution related problems then terrorism in the United States. Reduce pollution. Drive less, reduce coal and oil burning power generation.

Polluted water. Right now only about 3 percent of the earth’s water is fresh water. That does not mean it is drinkable, it means that it is not salty. I do not know how much of that is drinkable without significant water treatment. Water pollution not only impacts human health, but also plant health and animal health. Some of the pollutants in water are natural. There are water holes in the desert that are contaminated with arsenic. These are undrinkable even for plants and animals. Many pollutants are man made. Agriculture runoff, from fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides are entering streams and rivers. Many rivers are used for fresh water. These polluted waters have to be treated before it is drinkable. Untreated water not only has more chemicals, but more parasites and other disease causing germs. Buy organic, don’t put harsh chemicals down the drain.

For the health reasons alone, we need to continue to protect and improve the environment.

I am going to blend the argument for economic and political reasons. I think they cross each other so much, there is very little to differentiate them. First let’s take a look at water. Water is the life blood of many wars and battles. I recently read an article about Darfur – you know that war torn, genocidal area? What set it off? It wasn’t just I hate you and you have to die. It was that the farmers were running out of water, and would not let the nomadic herders on their land anymore. Hmm, water is gone, economy is changing, war breaks out. That is an extreme case, or is it? One writer attributes a lot more localized wars and skirmishes to changing water resources. Here in the United States there are continued court battles over water rights. With the damming of the Colorado river, and exporting that water to California, the water rights battles only get fiercer.

The Aral sea in Kazakhstan is drying up. It is drying up because the central Soviet Government decided to divert water from Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, its feeding rivers, to dry areas in Uzbekistan to grow cotton. The sea's surface area has shrunk by approximately 60%, and its volume by 80%. In 1960, the Aral Sea was the world's fourth-largest lake, by 1998, it had dropped to eighth-largest. Over the same time period its salinity has increased from about 10 g/l to about 45 g/l. As of 2004, the Aral Sea's surface area was only 25% of its original size, and still contracting. What it has left behind is a devastating mix of toxic chemicals and economic impoverished people. The children who still live near the Aral sea have a significantly higher rate of kidney cancer. This is economic and political devastation caused by not protecting water.

A response to a previous post

Go read this first.

http://redneckperil.blogspot.com/2007/03/cui-bono.html

Kenny Said: At any rate, the serious point underlying my silliness here is that rich Westerners who are out to save the environment have a nasty habit of grossly underestimating the degree to which their environmentalism is a luxury of the wealthy. They have a nasty habit of underestimating the very real human cost that comes from environmentalism-motivated restrictions on freedom and capitalism, the two great engines of the prosperity of the Anglosphere in general and America in particular – which prosperity is, ironically, the precondition for all the spare time that Western environmentalists have on their hands in which to promote environmentalism.

Kenny Said: There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the foolish intellectual habits that are manipulated by the global warming propagandists, have a far more deadly potential than does global warming.

Kenny Said: We don’t have a nice long list of actual deaths and human misery directly attributable to global worming.

My first response to this is, ummm, yes we do. The severity of hurricane Katrina has been attributed to global warming.

My second response to this, is that pollution and environmental damage is not a rich westerners cause. I will cite two examples. I am sure you are aware of these examples. This is from our beloved Kazakhstan. The first is not a result of fossil fuels, but of the worst kind of environmental ignorance. I am sure you will use this as an example of how governments are bad, and I will agree. I will use this as an example of how not protecting the environment severely damages people – and poor people at that.

The Aral sea is a true environmental disaster. No it was not caused by global warming, It was caused by diverting water from the rivers that feed it in order to grow cotten in areas that should not grow cotten. There is a dead zone left after the Aral sea evaporated. It is not merely a lake that dried up, it is a land that cannot be used because of the pollutants that have precipitated out on the dry land that is left. Pesticide, herbicides, and many other toxic chemicals have left kids that lived around there with significantly higher rates of rare liver cancers. This doesn't even come close to describing the absolute devastation in that area.

The Caspian sea is one of the most polluted bodies of water in the world. For more information see here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/caspenv.html (I am sure you will discount this because it is a government site though) The pollution is a direct result of the industry and oil extraction that is centered there.

Kenny Said: In defense of this position they trot out the argument that our dependence on foreign oil causes petrodollars to flow to various nasty people like the oily (in multiple senses) Saudis or murderous loonies like Chavez, and argue that we need to make the price of oil fall.

Kenny Said: At which point I observe that this is a first-rate reason to open up the continental shelves and Anwar to oil production...and do you know, it’s just astonishing to see how instantaneously my conversational compatriots cease to be concerned with the security risk posed by American dependence on foreign oil production.

This is an intellectually dishonest argument and you know it. In fact, most global warming proponents are very clear and very consistent as to their attitudes towards oil. I would like to see the price of oil and gas driven up so high that it forces people to stop driving cars and forces people to use public transportation more. There are many reasons to stop using oil. It is not intellectually dishonest to through as many of those arguments out to try and convince people to reduce using oil, and find alternative energy.

Only secondarily would I even mention that oil funds terrorist countries. First and foremost, oil is bad for the environment. The pollution attributed to oil including the destruction caused by extracting it, the extremely toxic waste created in refining it, the toxic byproducts of burning it. Huston Texas is one of the most polluted cities in the country – due to oil refining. Oh, wait, oil is good isn’t it?

Kenny Said: Something tells me most global warming fanatics would, even in the face of the it’s-okay-because-there-are-other-good-reasons defense…

Hmmm, Given that there are so many issues surrounding global warming. The more important issue is protecting the environment. Without clean air, without clean water, humans die. Global warming is one a smaller issue surrounding protecting the environment. Most people I talk to about global warming agree that the bigger protecting the environment is what drives them to push for using less oil, using less electricity, and reducing pollution and increasing alternative energy.