@ - Wednesday, September 19, 1990 - North Shore News Warships will ensure planet will continue to be polluted WHAT THE invasion of Kuwait and the military and political response it has generated reveals — more than anything else — is a collective insanity which threatens our planet with unparalleled ecological ca- tastrophe within a genera- tion. Fleets, armies and squadrons from: around the world have amassed in the Persian Gulf and in Saudi Arabia to restore little Kuwait’s independence after being seized by Iraq. At the political level, as one astute writer put it, the exercise comes down to *‘making the world safe for feudalism.’’ Kuwait was, of course, ruled by a particularly obnoxious and ia- satiable royal family quite happy to gamble millions of dollars away each night in casinos. The place was operated accord- ing to a medieval set of laws that keeps women in a state of serf- dom and routinely inflicted mutilation as a form of punish- ment while allowing the shieks to squander the country’s natural resources at a relentless and total- ly irresponsible rate. Big loss! Why didn’t we invade them and depose the government ourselves? It certainly wasn’t a democracy. Pm not arguing for a moment that Iraq’s leader isn’t a blood- crazed monster, or that invasions by totalitarian regimes should be condoned. But the evil that is em- bodied by Saddam Hussein merely confuses the real issue, which is that the whole planet is being ruined by the unchecked use of fossil fuels provided in large measure by the Arab states. If anything should be done in the Middle East, it should be the shutting down of the oil wells — for all our sakes, and particularly for the sake of our children. But an international armada has gathered for the very opposite purpose. The obvious underlying reason for the outburst of international indignation over the invasion of Kuwait is the developed world’s dependence on petroleum to keep its economies running. Nothing personifies this fact of life more vividly than President George Bush sending warships to defend to the death his right to race about in his own personal powerboat, squandering diesel fuel THAT'S HOW MANY CANADIANS ARE WHEEL- CHAIR TENNIS PLAYERS ut SG Bob Hunter_ ECOLOGIC at a truly disgusting rate. The Japanese are even using the Kuwait situation as a pretext to break out of their Second World War-imposed constitutional pro- hibition on dispatching armies around the globe. They are doing it, like the Americans, in the name of liberating one group of oppressed Arabs from the yoke imposed by another group of oppressed Arabs, but like the Americans, the Japanese are really concerned about keeping the oi! taps in the Middle East flowing full blast. if one steps back for a moment and pauses to think in an ecological context, it becomes clear that the ‘tgood guys’’ have gathered in the Persian Gulf to make sure that the atmosphere of Planet Earth can be polluted at the fastest rate possible, thereby guaranteeing that our agricultural base, our fisheries, our forests — everything that life depends on — will be laid to waste by forest fires, droughts, heat storms, sand dunes, dustbowls and salt flats within a matter of mere decades. Because there is absolutely no doubt about it any longer — the “‘cooking”’ of Planet Earth has begun. We are heing boiled, liter- ally, in oil. Nothing brings this home more forcefully than the latest book out on the subject. [have just got my review copy. am not sure it is even on the stands yet. Titled Global Warming, The Greenpeace Report, published by Oxford Uni- versity Press, it is a 554-puge summary by 20 of the world’s leading scientists and energy analysts of the most up-to-date data on the Greenhouse Effect. It is not just alarming and wor- risome — it is frankly terrifying. Commissioned as a shadow document to make the findings of the Iintergovernmental Panel on Climate Change readable to the general public, the book touches on everything related to the crisis. This includes the effects of global warming, the state of the art of climate-modelling, lessons from climates of the past, policy responses thus far, the implica- tions for health, the role of energy efficiency, nuclear power and global warming, the role of trop- ical forests, the part played by motor vehicles, the costs of cut- ting greenhouse gases, and the necessity to redefine economics in view of our rapidly changing climate. It would not be possible to do justice to this document in a single column, so I'll take a few columns and delve into some of the details. The role of the automobile, for one thing, is worth spelling ovt, since we are all guilty. Also, in view of the nuclear power in- dustry’s shameless attempt to cash in on the greenhouse effect, the argument against attempting to turn to nukes to solve the problem is well worth examining. But the worst bit of information to emerge from this data is evi- dence that any increase ia global temperature itself triggers the release of carbon and methane al- ready trapped in the soil and in plants, thereby speeding up the process of warming enormously — and in ways that will quickly get beyond our control. eS ES THE NEW CHILDCARE SERVICE EVERYDAY 9:30am - 12:30pm TUESDAYS & THURSDAYS 4:30 - 7:30pm RON ZALKO HEALTH CLUB INTERNATIONAL PLAZA COMPLEX 1989 MARINE DR. NORTH SHORE 986-3487 RON ZALKO FITNESS CONNECTION 2660 WEST 4TH AVE. 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