The Ecology of War: Environmental Impacts of Weaponry and Warfare

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 185 pages
• Published by: Walker & Company June 1993
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0802712622
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0802712622
• Book Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Weighs: 14.4 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
Saddam Hussein's oil fires during the Persian Gulf War were only the latest example of the environmental costs of warfare. In this useful survey, Lanier-Graham goes back to earliest recorded times--Samson burning the crops of the Philistines, King Archidamus cutting down fruit trees to form a palisade in the Peloponnesian War--to show how armies have incidentally or deliberately been destructive of the natural environment. Scorched-earth warfare, bombing, shelling, trenching, defoliation and other activities have destroyed forests, deprived animal populations of habitat and fostered extinctions, she writes. Her survey is especially strong on modern American wars, offering examples ranging from the devastation of live corals to build Pacific runways in WW II to the creation of some thirty million bomb craters in the Vietnam War. The author's The Nature Directory was named a Top Reference Book of 1991 by the New York Public Library.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A superficial and simplistic overview of the environmental havoc wreaked by war through the centuries. Possibly intending this as a classroom text for junior-high readers, Lanier-Graham (The Nature Directory, 1991--not reviewed) employs no-frills prose and bald-faced foreshortening to create a ``history'' of conflicts in which ecological damage was sustained, moving erratically from the Third Punic War--which led victorious Romans to sow the ruins of rival Carthage with salt so that it would remain a wasteland--to the intentional oil-based devastation of the recent Persian Gulf showdown. Contretemps involving the US receive the most attention, with various ancillary aspects of modern warfare--particularly weapons production and testing, and postwar weapons disposal--considered at length. With land laid waste by deliberate defoliation and ``scorched-earth'' policies from Sherman's March to the war in Vietnam, seas poisoned by chemical weapons dumped after WW II, and air filled with radiation from nuclear blasts, the record of ruin is a consistently grim one, although Lanier-Graham makes an effort to look on the bright side by noting postwar reclamation projects that attempted to lessen the ravages of armed conflict. A sobering and worthy subject--but an inadequate, at times almost trifling, treatment. (Twenty-four b&w photographs--not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Reader Reviews
I love history, though tend to have my nose buried books on Medieval Britain. However, war, its weaponry, is such a core of that the evolutions of warfare and its impact have to be of interest to those really concerned in military actions and their lingering results. Back when "scorched earth policy" was carried out by Kings such as Edward Longshanks and Robert the Bruce, they knew the destructive impact on the land could change the face of battle...and life after. You saw the same application of this, when Sherman made his infamous march to the sea during the American Civil War. The application of these simple principals is only magnified in today's world. Though this book was written in the early 90s, it's as relevant today as the war in the Middle East lumbers on. The pollution, the destruction of the environment, is more terrible, as the weapons are continually spiralling in capabilities. The impact on human life in warfare - soldier and civilian alike - is always horrible, but this book goes beyond, looking at the land, the air, the sea. The statistic range from offering examples ranging from the devastation of live coral reef to build Pacific runways in WW II to the creation of some thirty million bomb craters in the Vietnam War (!!) are scars left that do not heal in centuries. As a child, I visited the Kentucky River area, listening to the old farmers talking about problems with plowing certain fields. They discussed how the land had been scared during the American Civil War, because of the troops digging so many trenches in the area. The Yankees would march so many miles a day, stop, dig trenches for protection to sleep in or fight in, with the Confederates doing the same, day after day for years. Over a hundred years later, these "scars" from that war still pitted the land. That was impact of just simple soldiers digging with a simple shoves. Think of the impact on this earth left by all the wars since. It's well written, thought provoking.