Environmental Terrorism: Is Nature Fighting Back?
The following article appeared as a guest column in Monday's Iowa City Press-Citizen. Tom Walz is a professor emeritus in social work at the University of Iowa.We live in an age of terrorism. The recent removal of Osama bin Laden is part of that scenario.
Terrorism, as we experience it, is relatively new to our world. Unlike war, we have been uncertain how to deal with it. By relabeling our actions as a “war on terrorism,” we become more comfortable in engaging in a fight to reduce the acts of terrorists and defeat the perpetrators.
Mother Nature is not often thought of as a terrorist. Yet if terrorism is the unexpected unleashing of some primal force capable of serious destruction of person and property, Mother Nature is a terrorist.
While poets and naturalists may praise the natural environment, the reality is that it also is the source for much destruction. Natural disasters from Japan to Joplin have captured as many headlines and produced as many body counts as those emanating from al-Qaida or other groups.
In the past decade alone, earthquakes, tsunamis, forest fires, droughts, floods, cyclones, tornadoes and hurricanes have taken thousands of lives and cost trillions in property damage. Unlike war, we cannot mobilize to fight environmental terrorism. Where is the enemy that we can kill?
At best, we can use our technology for advance warnings to minimize loss of life and find ways to reduce the environmental conditions that could result in future disasters.
Why does this beautiful planet produce such acts of environmental terrorism? The planet has a singular mission, its own survival — stability or stasis. When conditions on its surface or above/below threaten its integrity, Mother Nature, by her own laws, responds.
Think of how the human use of the environment has assaulted this integrity:
» Bombs and land mines leave the surface of the planet with horrible scars.
» The industrial system digs deeply into the bowels of the Earth and leaves behind the toxic effluents of the manufacturing process and their eventual discarded products.
» Even the natural acts of producing food and flowers have been turned into assaults by the use of toxins and poor land management.
» Every earthquake, tsunami or flood represents a natural effort of the planet to protect itself.
There will be no war against nature's terrorism until we can identify the enemy. And as much as we hate to admit it, the enemy in environmental terrorism is us.
To the extent that we over-populate, over-pollute and over-consume we challenge the planet's integrity and as a result the planet can be expected to respond harshly.
We may well discover that the current way of life in the industrial societies has given rise to both forms of terrorism, man-made and nature induced. Without a dramatic change in this way of life, we can expect to have to continue to live (and die) from these destructive forces.
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