NO DOUBT, WAR is the most devastating incident that can befall a civilized world. On the third week of the US-Israel war attacks on Iran, this is a snapshot of losses according to The Guardian: about 1,500 lives; more than 40,000 civilian buildings (some, culturally significant; nearly 300 medical facilities) and 10,000 homes; and likewise, critical energy facilities in someUS-allied Middle East countries due to the Iran retaliation. Of course, many parts of the world economy are being hit by skyrocketing oil prices, Iran being ranked the 6th largest in oil production, and with the country’s restriction in the Strait of Hormuz (where 20% of oil ships pass through) for US-Israel allies.
With no surrender or enemy wipeout in sight, it is predictable that statistics will still rise.
‘As warned by scientists and environmentalists, planet Earth systems may collapse by 2050 due to climate change greatly caused by how extensively and wantonly we use energy to fuel our everyday life. Energy, that same dividing and strategic issue in the current conflicts.’
ENVIRONMENT, A CASUALTY
There’s also an almost unquantifiable casualty, the environment, whose destruction will be as much a haunting nightmare. Imagine ballistic missiles flyingon open space, black smoke going up from bombed-out buildings and oil infrastructures, dregs of physical destruction and oil spills flowing down to bodies of water.
What a surefire way to pollute the air, cause massive greenhouse gas emissions, contaminate marine life and disrupt habitats, degrading/destroying natural ecosystems – forests, rivers and other aquatic bodies, agricultural fields. With consequences not only to the present generation but way into the distant future.
The World Health Organization has warned that the environmental impacts of attacks on oil infrastructures could have severe health effects on children, older people, and those with pre-existing conditions. An Iranian humanitarian NGO said recently that they had received 70,000 calls from people seeking “mental health support, guidance, and counselling”.
THE DESTRUCTIVE PATH
Sadly, millennia after the creation of the universe, humans have not totally moved on from a life of savagery. There remains the lust to assert power, build weapons to conquer, go beyond moral and political boundaries. Christian or Muslim, democratic or communist, “war” is a definitive resort in declaring superiority or an insatiable ambition. Either democratic Trump is right to quell Iran’s threat of being a nuclear superpower or the Khameneis are right in defending their sovereignty and Islamic culture, but life and the world are too high a price to stake.
Let’s keep the newswatch while we can. Yet, let’s not forget the earth is in great peril even without this military fighting.
As warned by scientists and environmentalists, planet Earth systems may collapse by 2050 due to climate change greatly caused by how extensively and wantonly we use energy to fuel our everyday life. Energy, that same dividing and strategic issue in the current conflicts.