Militarism is Bad for the Environment

by Simon Doolittle†
March 2003

Militaries are notorious polluters.

military presence is virtually the single most reliable predictor
of environmental damage.” Since the end of the Cold War, many plans to convert military bases to
civilian use have been cancelled because the sites are contaminated beyond any hope of restoration. And military

pollution isn’t limited to bases, it does significant damage to

the environment at large.

Kills Gorillas, Monkeys

Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News
January 11, 2009
Pollution causes global warming, global warming destroys
natural habitat. Mountain gorillas are in a particularly serious
bind. They have little access to fresh fruit in their high-altitude
habitats, and they're "sitting on top of mountains with nowhere
else to go."
EXTENSIONS

Monkey Overpopulation won’t happen

Monkey Overpopulation in Puerto Rico

Wilson 08

The growth of patas monkey populations has reached the point

where they have become a "nuisance" to Puerto Rico agriculture. They
have become such a problem that they have to be caught and sent to other facilities or face being euthanized.

Bases don’t cause Pollution

War is said to be the ultimate cause of
environmental destruction.
Hayashi Kiminori 10
The absolute devastation of the environment in combat has
been proven by examples such as World War II, the Vietnam
War, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War. However, even in
peacetime, military activity causes environmental destruction
through the construction of facilities, everyday activities on
base, and the preparation for war such as military training and
maneuvers. Particularly in the case of the United States, the
enormous military power that accounts for half of the world’s
military expenditures, the destruction of the environment is
appalling. For example, in Japan, the damage to nature that would
accompany the construction of an alternative facility to
Futenma Marine Corps Air Station in Okinawa will be
accelerated and aircraft noise will damage the areas
surrounding the bases. In the Korean community of Mehyang-
ri, aerial bombing practice has caused severe environmental
pollution.  This essay will focus on the pollution of US bases in Asia in order to come to grips with
the environmental problems caused by military activity. After investigating the pollution of US bases in
Yokota (Japan), Okinawa and the Philippines, we will examine the principal conclusions that can be draw
from those examples.

it was recognized that these bases caused environmental pollution through

such routine uses as oil spills, the dispersion of pesticide, and the disposal
of wastes and ammunition. The US military failed to properly manage and
dispose of toxic materials and did not remove this pollution when the bases
were closed. The US military has not done any pollution cleanup.
Monkeys aren’t in Korea

Monkeys have been presented in the past as gifts to the king of

Gorea.

Monkeys aren’t in Japan

Japanese Macaque
 IMPACTS

TERRORISM (Afghanistan Only)

TALIBAN TRAINING MONKEY TERRORISTS

Analysis by Viegas
Discovery, Wed Jul 14, 2010 12:10 PM ET
Monkeys have been trained by the Taliban in Afghanistan to use machine
guns and trench mortars against U.S. military forces. Monkeys can now
operate the Kalashnikov, Bren light machine gun, and have the ability to
identify and attack U.S. soldiers based on the appearance of their uniforms.
the Taliban was inspired by none other than the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency, which it claims used peanuts and bananas to train "monkey
soldiers" in Vietnam. A senior U.S. military source confirmed the existence
of the Taliban monkey soldiers, military experts call armed monkeys
'monkey terrorists’. monkeys wielding grenades when India and Pakistan
were at war.

TERRORISM RISKS EXTINCTION – THE INITIAL ATTACK WOULD COST

THOUSANDS OF LIVES AND US RETALIATION CAUSES UNCHECKED WAR
SID-AHMED ‘4

A nuclear attack by terrorists will be much more critical than

Hiroshima and Nagazaki, even if the weapons used are less harmful
than those used then, Japan, at the time the technology is a secret for
nobody we are at a stage where they can be detonated
TERRORISM CAUSES EXTINCTION – THE US WOULD RETALIATE WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS
CORSI ‘5
[Jerome. PhD in Poli Sci from Harvard, Expert in Politically-Motivated Violence. Atomic Iran, Pg 176-8//JVOSS]
The combination of horror and outrage that will surge upon the nation will
demand that the president retaliate for the incomprehensible damage done by
the attack. The problem will be that the president will not immediately know
how to respond or against whom. The perpetrators will have been incinerated by the explosion that
destroyed New York City. Unlike 9-11, there will have been no interval during the attack when those hijacked could
make phone calls to loved ones telling them before they died that the hijackers were radical Islamic extremists. There
will be no such phone calls when the attack will not have been anticipated until the instant the terrorists detonate
Nor will there
their improvised nuclear device inside the truck parked on a curb at the Empire State Building .
be any possibility of finding any clues, which either were vaporized instantly
or are now lying physically inaccessible under tons of radioactive rubble. Still,
the president, members of Congress, the military, and the public at large will
suspect another attack by our known enemy –Islamic terrorists. The first
impulse will be to launch a nuclear strike on Mecca, to destroy the whole
religion of Islam. Medina could possibly be added to the target list just to make the point with crystal clarity.
Yet what would we gain? The moment Mecca and Medina were wiped off the map , the Islamic world – more
than 1 billion human beings in countless different nations – would feel attacked. Nothing would
emerge intact after a war between the United States and Islam. The apocalypse
would be upon us. [CONTINUES} Or the president might decide simply to launch a limited nuclear strike on
Tehran itself. This might be the most rational option in the attempt to retaliate but still communicate restraint. The
Muslims
problem is that a strike on Tehran would add more nuclear devastation to the world calculation.
around the world would still see the retaliation as an attack on Islam,
especially when the United States had no positive proof that the destruction of
New York City had been triggered by radical Islamic extremists with assistance
from Iran. But for the president not to retaliate might be unacceptable to the American people. So weakened by
the loss of New York, Americans would feel vulnerable in every city in the nation. "Who is going to be next?" would be
That the president might
the question on everyone's mind. For this there would be no effective answer.
think politically at this instant seems almost petty, yet every president is by
nature a politician. The political party in power at the time of the attack would
be destroyed unless the president retaliated with a nuclear strike against
somebody. The American people would feel a price had to be paid while the
country was still capable of exacting revenge.
 DISEASE
AIDS traced to African monkeys
CNN 03
An international group of scientists has traced the ancestry of the
virus that caused AIDS back to strains found in African monkeys.

Two different monkey virus strains combined in chimpanzees to

create the HIV virus which was then passed on to humans, the
scientists told the journal Science.
Earlier studies had shown that humans contracted the virus that
attacks the immune system from chimps, but were unable to
determine where the chimps got the virus from. More than 25 million
people have been killed by the AIDS virus that kills white blood cells
and causes the body to become defenceless against infections with
an estimated 40 million people living with HIV.
AIDS leads to extinction
Corey S. Powell, he is a science writer and a Senior Editor at Discover magazine, as well as an adjunct
professor of science journalism at NYU's Science, 2K “20 Ways the World Could End”
http://discovermagazine.com/2000/oct/featworld

If Earth doesn't do us in, our fellow organisms might be up to the task. Germs and
people have always coexisted, but occasionally the balance gets out of whack .
The Black Plague killed one European in four during the 14th century; influenza
took at least 20 million lives between 1918 and 1919; the AIDS epidemic has
produced a similar death toll and is still going strong . From 1980 to 1992, reports the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality from infectious disease in the United
States rose 58 percent . Old diseases such as cholera and measles have developed
new resistance to antibiotics. Intensive agriculture and land development is bringing
humans closer to animal pathogens. International travel means diseases can spread
faster than ever. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert who recently left the
Minnesota Department of Health, described the situation as "like trying to swim
against the current of a raging river." The grimmest possibility would be the emergence
of a strain that spreads so fast we are caught off guard or that resists all chemical means of
control, perhaps as a result of our stirring of the ecological pot. About 12,000 years ago, a
sudden wave of mammal extinctions swept through the Americas. Ross
MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History argues the culprit was
extremely virulent disease, which humans helped transport as they migrated into
the New World
New Virus 'Jumps' From Monkey to Scientist, Causing
Serious Illness
Goodwin 10
A never-before
detected strain of virus that killed more than one-third of a
monkey colony at a U.S. lab appears to have 'jumped' from the animals to
sicken a human scientist, researchers report.
Although it's an unusual move for that type of virus and does warrant further monitoring, the researchers stress there is no

cause for alarm at this time. There is no evidence the virus has spread beyond the single scientist -- who recovered from

her illness -- nor is there even proof that the virus would be transmissible between humans.

"there is very strong evidence to suggest a cross-species transmission

Still,

event happened," said lead investigator Dr. Charles Chiu, an assistant professor of laboratory medicine and
medicine/infectious diseases at the University of California San Francisco. "I don't think people should be

worried about this right now. It's more of a worry to public health officials
monitoring these new viruses that have the potential for causing outbreaks."

The study was presented Friday at the Infectious Diseases Society of America annual meeting in Vancouver, Canada.

The scientist appears to have caught the virus while investigating an outbreak of
illness among a colony of Titi monkeys at the California National Primate
Research Center in Davis, Chiu said.
Among the monkeys, the virus was highly contagious and deadly: Of 55 monkeys housed at the center, 23 (about 40%)

became seriously ill with upper respiratory symptoms that progressed to pneumonia and an inflammation of the liver.

Nineteen monkeys, or about 83% of those infected, died.

Broad-spectrum antibiotics did not help the monkeys, suggesting that the pneumonia was caused by the virus and not a

secondary bacterial infection, Chiu said.

Researchers later determined the cause of the illness was an adenovirus, a broad class of viruses that can cause

everything from relatively harmless respiratory illnesses such as the common cold, to pneumonia, as well

as gastroenteritis, conjunctivitis and inflammation of the liver in people.

The new strain, however, had never before been identified, Chiu said.

"This is almost certainly a new species of adenovirus," Chiu said. "By looking at the 'sequence divergence', or how

different the genetic sequence of this adenovirus is relatively to other adenoviruses, we believe it is a new species."

The scientist who fell ill had been in close contact with the monkeys. Though she became seriously ill with pneumonia

around the same time the monkeys were falling ill, she was not hospitalized and recovered after about four weeks, Chiu

said.

Her blood tested positive for antibodies to the virus three months after the epidemic, Chiu said. While not a definitive test,

Chiu said it's very likely the cause of her illness was the new adenovirus.
Infectious disease and public health experts are always on the lookout for new viruses that pose a threat to people, said

Dr. Aaron Glatt, a spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America and president and CEO of St. Joseph

Hospital in Bethpage, N.Y.

While this sort of event makes infectious disease experts sit up and take notice, "it's not something to be nervous about or

worried about today," Glatt said. "There is not a novel adenovirus associated with a deadly outbreak in humans, but it's

very interesting from a scientific point of view."

While other viruses can infect more than one species, adenoviruses tend to be species-specific, which makes this

somewhat unusual, he said. But as of now, there is no evidence of an outbreak of the virus outside that single monkey

colony in Davis, Glatt added.

Chiu and his colleagues are trying to determine the origin of the virus, including whether it started as a monkey virus or

began in a human and was passed to the monkeys. Since no new monkeys had been introduced to the colony in six

years, one possibility is that the virus was circulating, undetected, in rhesus monkeys also housed at the facility and

passed somehow to the Titis.

Researchers are also screening several thousand people to determine if anyone else has antibodies to the virus, which

would indicate prior exposure and that the virus has already been in circulation in the general human population.

Another question is whether it's contagious among people, Chiu said. "There is possibly some evidence it's transmissible,

this virus has the potential for human-to-human

but we just don't know yet," Chiu noted. "If

transmission, it would have the potential of developing into an outbreak."

While adenoviruses usually stick to one species, other viruses do "jump" between species frequently, Chiu said, and a

virus that makes one species very ill may be relatively harmless in another.

SARS coronavirus, for example, colonizes bats and ferrets without causing disease, while in humans the illness triggers

severe pneumonia, Chiu said.

Influenza also jumps between species. Pigs may show no signs of having H1N1 ("Swine flu"), but humans can get very

sick from it.

Researchers are also working to determine if the new adenovirus is a "recombinant," or combined virus, which includes

bits of genetic information from monkey and human adenoviruses.

"When viruses jump they can cause much more severe disease or less severe disease," Chiu said. "These findings might

be an argument to do more broad surveillance of animals. If we can better understand what kind of viruses circulate in

animals, it might help predict what viruses might jump over and when."
 Agriculture
Monkeys wreak havoc in Florida Keys
CNN July 10, 1998
Floridas Lois Key looks like a mangroveladen island should lush
and green, fringed with healthy trees.

But on the other side of a fence that divides the key, the
mangrove trees are sick or dead. And in some places, nothing
grows anymore.

The reason is Monkeys specifically, rhesus monkeys , Lois Key and nearby
Racoon Key are owned by Charles River Laboratories, the worlds biggest producer of lab animals. For decades, the

company raised rhesus monkeys on the islands and allowed them to range free on Lois Key.

They ate the trees, they ate the coastal mangroves and actually
killed the trees, said Ed Davidson of the Florida Audubon
Society. The shoreline eroded, and the monkey droppings wash
out into the public waters. This is really a mess.

Charles River Laboratories is a subsidiary of the optical giant Bausch and Lomb. It sells the monkeys raised on the keys

to researchers studying AIDS, Alzheimers disease and other afflictions. The animals cost up to 4,000 each.

After years of lawsuits, a judge finally has ordered all

freeroaming monkeys off the island within the next couple of
years. Charles River has also agreed to remove all caged animals from the keys by early next century and turn the
land over to the state of Florida.

But Davidson and other critics of the companys operations take

little consolation in that donation.

Theyre going to give us a bunch of dead islands after doing

decades worth of damage to public resources that they never
owned, Davidson said. Thats no kind of a deal.

Indeed, both islands are inside the Florida Keys National Marine
Sanctuary, 2,800 square miles of bays, reefs and islands that are
supposed to be protected. While Charles River owned the
islands, the shoreline where red mangroves grew remained state
property.
And red mangrove trees, which stabilize shorelines and provide
homes for dozens of species, are protected by law.

Some area homeowners dont understand why the company has been allowed to let the trees be destroyed.

I own the land that I live on here, and yet I am not allowed to cut or trim the mangroves, said island resident Michael

Vaughn. Thats public land out there, and a private corporation, for the sake of making money, is able to destroy the fringe

mangroves that none of the rest of us that own them can touch.

they have acknowledged

Company officials declined CNNs request for an interview. But in the past,

the environmental damage done by the monkeys, and they say theyve taken
steps to repair it.

ANYLTICAL
The destruction of the environment disconnects us from
nature, causes dehumanization. Ever since the beginnings
of human technology, we have become increasingly
separated from our roots, from nature. When we don’t care
about natural animal life, we eventually don’t care about
life In general. The primary indicator of a psychopath is
animal cruelty, death of the environment will cause the
human race to have a psychopathic nature. The current US
law system restricts the rights of the psychopathic and
serial killers, deeming them lower than legitimate US
citizens. Restricting rights dehumanizes, African slaves
were not allowed to vote until they gained rights. Slaves
were considered lower than livestock. Environmental
destruction by monkeys dehumanizes us.

It also causes the direct impact of starvation; crops getting

destroyed severely limits our food supply. Already, 5
million people die every year from lack of food, but if a
monkey overpopulation were to occur, they would consume
extremely large quantities of farm and agriculture. What
happened in the Florida Keys is that they ate EVERYTHING
that wasn’t fenced off. They would gobble up our crops and
as a result our meats would die off too, for all of our food
sources are dependant upon crops. This would result in
mass starvation on a grand scale. This causes extinction
through a food crisis, anything not directly protected by
military forces would be eaten by monkeys.
Crop Raiding in Uganda
Catherine M. Hill1

Received October 15, 1998; revision August 24, 1999; accepted October 1, 19 99
Much has been written about insect damage to standing crops, but an area
that has received little attention within agricultural development, conservation,
and primatological literature is that of primates and the potential damage
they can cause to farmers’ fields. This is likely to become an increasingly
important issue for people. monkeys can cause extensive damage
to field crops, such as maize and cassava. in
addition to the direct costs associated with crop losses attributed to baboon
foraging activity, there are indirect costs of monkey crop raiding such as
increased labor demands to protect crops from them and, occasionally, to
replant crop stands badly damaged by monkeys. These results have important
implications for future primate conservation policy.

Crop raiding is not a new phenomenon.

Hill 99
Perhaps not surprisingly, certain species
of primates are very successful crop raiders. With their extensive repertoire
of cooperative behaviors, opportunistic life-style, and nonspecialized and
omnivorous dietary tendencies, primates such as baboons (Forthman-
Quick, 1986), vervets (Boulton et al., 1996), and macaques (Pirta et al.,
1997) are highly adaptable and take readily to living alongside humans in
rural or sometimes urban and semi-urban settings. Their highly adaptable
nature, along with their ability to learn very rapidly and change their
behavior accordingly, makes them very successful and potentially troublesome
when living close to humans

Monkeys Raid Crops

Hill 99
Previous work with farmers living around the southern edge of the
Budongo Forest Reserve, Uganda, confirms that many of them consider
wildlife, and baboons in particular, to be a major threat to their livelihood.
Six species of primate were reported to raid field crops: chimpanzees (Pan
troglodytes), olive baboons (Papio hamadryas anubis), vervets, red-tailed
guenons, blue monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops, Cercopithecus ascanius, and
C. mitis), and black-and-white colobus (Colobus guereza).
Crop raiding causes economic damage and starvation
Hill 99
People from local villages are able to farm here providing they plant only annual
crops and agree to plant and tend tree seedings provided by The National Forestry
College, situated locally at Nyabyeya. There is a high degree of dependence on
agriculture for subsistence within this community, with approximately 70% of
people reporting agriculture as their sole, or main, source of livelihood. Fifty-four
percent of the participants in this farm study of crop raiding are entirely dependent
on agriculture for their subsistence. for household consumption or for sale at local
markets. We recorded 70 instances of crop damage by wildlife to the 37 farms being
monitored during the study period. This is likely to be a conservative estimate of
overall crop-raiding frequency. Baboons crop raid more often than any other
species and are responsible for 70% of all crop damage events. They uproot or snap
off the stems to feed on pith and sap, thereby removing the plants from further
agricultural production. Baboons have the potential to cause large amounts of
damage locally. They raid farms more frequently than other species of wildlife do,
cause proportionately greater amounts of damage than all other animals combined,
and visit farms throughout most of the year. In addition, they prefer
crops. the most frequently cultivated field crops within this community (Hill, 1997),
and they form the basis of most households’ meals (Hill, unpublished). Thus,
they are of great importance to household food security. Farmers are unable to
offset some of the costs of crop damage by replanting because damage occurs too
late in the growing season. they visit farms frequently, in large and sometimes very
large groups, and can be very persistent. For example, an elderly man commented,
‘‘Baboons come in large numbers and are not scared of people.
They keep on coming, even when you kill them.’’ His neighbor was keen to stress
this point further, and added, ‘‘Baboons are not scared of people. When you chase
them, they run and hide and then come back. When you chase other animals, they
run away for good.’’ In addition, baboons are perceived as intelligent animals, and
well organized in the way they raid fields, as reflected in some of the comments
made by local farmers. ‘They destroy much and cause a lot of damage and they are
many. They are organized like the army.’’ Another farmer said, ‘‘Baboons are a
problem because of their skills, which are like those of humans—they check for the
owner from the tops of trees, and when chased they just hide, and then return and
take the crops.’’ Locally, many people regard baboons as being vindictive,
damaging crops for the sake of it rather than for food alone, and respondents often
made comments such as, ‘‘After feeding, baboons destroy the rest of the crop. When
there are no fruits, monkeys leave the crop; thus monkeys are better than
baboons.’’ Another comment was, ‘‘They [baboons] just break and sit on any food
they don’t eat.’’ A number of studies have reported that baboons and other
primates are more fearful of adult men than of women and children, and of people
carrying weapons versus ones who are unarmed (Strum, 1994; King and Lee, 1987).
Although it was recognized locally that adults, and particularly men, were most
feared by baboons (Hill, 1997), two-thirds of all crop guarding was carried out by
women and children. Successful guarding required that people be in the fields for
long periods of the day throughout the seasons when there were vulnerable crops in
the ground—i.e., most of the year. Obviously, this was not always possible given that
people had other tasks to complete, including attending school, household chores,
taking crops to the grinding mill, trading in the local markets, and employment by
local industries. Crop protection can incur actual monetary costs to households,
particularly where adult male members of the household are employed away from
the farm either part-time or full-time. Guards are usually employed to protect field
crops against wild pigs, which are primarily nocturnal in their raiding habits, but
some farmers locally employ laborers to guard vulnerable fields against baboon
raiding. Baboons that adopt crop raiding as part of their foraging strategy are able
to reduce their overall investment in foraging time because of the high nutritional
value of their preferred field crops. Consequently, in order to provide effective
protection for standing crops, farmers must harry primates extensively, making
crop raiding both energetically much more expensive and riskier for them (Strum,
1994). Under present circumstances, farming households
are not necessarily able to do this and may well already be facing labor bottlenecks
without investing extra time and labor guarding fields. Crop raiding by wildlife is
an issue that is likely to become an even more pressing concern for conservationists
and conservation programs in the future, as farmers and wildlife
continue to compete for resources.
And Economic damage leads to extinction