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A Glimpse Into War And The Environment

Wars and battles have long been a place in which chemicals are used against enemy forces.
They are effective, dangerous and unseen, making them a silent and deadly killer. The effects of
chemical warfare are obvious when examining the immediate outcome: the death of humans as
well as other living organisms, yet what is unseen are the effects that will rear themselves down the
road. This paper will examine a brief history of man’s use of chemical weapons and machines,
their effects on the environment and how this issue has begun to be dealt with.
The environment has long been one way that civilizations have found to wage war with
one another. To destroy an enemies lands and create an unfruitful, damaged wasteland is one
of the many tactics and strategies of winning a war. Some of the more ancient examples of
these methods include the destruction of the city of Carthage by the Romans during the Third
Punic War. The lands were salted by the Romans in hopes that nothing would ever grown there
again and that Carthage would be erased from history. During the American Civil Wa,r Ulysses
S. Grant ordered troops to eat out and destroy crops in Virginia, depriving confederate soldiers
of food and supplies. Interestingly, some major religions prohibit some of these wartime tactics.
Muslims are forbid by the Qur’an from harming trees during a holy war, which is also the
same for the Jews of the Old Testament. Chemical warfare commonly thought of as a recent
technology and idea, yet when in fact, it is not.
Trista Saunders
GE215 Midterm Paper
11/04/08
A Glimpse into War and the Environment
There are many examples within the last sixty years that show the modernization of
chemical warfare and their dire effects. During World War II the first use of the Atomic Bomb
was seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, (fig. I & II) as well as the “Scorched Earth Policies” being
employed by both the Germans and Soviet Army. During the 1950’s the US bombed dams in
Korea to...