It’s been a year since the last UN Climate Summit (COP-26) in Glasgow. COP-27, will begin this coming Sunday, November 6, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. This year the United Nation’s flagship climate conference will take place against the backdrop of the climate, energy and food crises, and will place special emphasis on addressing the damage already done and making good on past promises. While this climate congress tends to emphasize plans to cut emissions and limit global warming, it’s important to note that that there has long been concern over a myriad of environmental issues, including biodiversity.

At the height of the Cold War, Dr. Seuss wrote of the danger in his book The Lorax. The book came out just before the first anniversary of Earth Day in 1971. (The story of Ted and the Truffula Trees was first appeared on Cold War Studies in 2021.)

Although Seuss later called The Lorax ‘straight propaganda,’ the book found a receptive audience in the context of the growing environmental movement, appealing to those concerned with the inter relatedness of ecosystems and/or those concerned with the environmental dangers of capitalism. Take your pick. A case can be made for both.

The Lorax Disappears: Inter Relatedness of Ecosystems

Seuss begins his book by tackling a topic that’s of great interest today, deforestation, and its impact on biodiversity. A creature called ‘the Lorax’ is missing and there are many questions:

What was the Lorax?
And why was it there?
And why was it lifted and taken somewhere
From the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows?

We soon learn that there is someone who knows the answer to these questions, a man called the Once-ler.  

The Once-ler is a bit greedy and he will only tell you how ‘the Lorax was lifted away’ if you agree to pay. Once you do, he’ll call you by Whisper-ma-phone and tell you secrets that are ‘for your ears alone.’ Lucky for us, a young boy named Ted Wiggins hears the story and decides to pass it on. 

The Once-ler paints Ted a word picture of an idyllic pre-industrial environment, populated by Humming-Fish splashing around, Swomee Swans, and “Brown Bar-ba-loots frisking about in their Bar-ba-loot Suits as they played in the shade and ate Truffula fruits.”

But those trees! Those trees!
Those Truffula Trees!
All my life I’d been searching
for trees such as these.
The touch of their tuft
was much softer than silk.
And they had the sweet smell of fresh butterfly milk.

The Once-ler is so taken by the trees that stretch for “mile after mile in the fresh morning breeze”  that he knows just what to do:

In no time at all, I had built a small shop.
Then I chopped down a Truffula Tree with one chop.
And with great skillful skill and great speedy speed,
I took the soft tuft, and I knitted a Thneed.

Now, we’re off to the races. The Once-ler will soon cut down all the Truffula Trees to create a product called Thneeds, and as Thneeds become a ‘must have’ item, more and more trees will be harvested. 

I’m sure you can guess what happens. Soon there are no more trees, and no more Bar-ba-loots who lived in the trees. Sound familiar?

Today one million of the world’s estimated 8 million species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction, and many of the ecosystem services essential for human wellbeing are eroding.

So, as it turns out, Seuss was quite prescient. But, even so, I’m a bit confused about the focal point of The Lorax. Environmental concerns in the 1970s weren’t primarily focused on desertification, coral reefs, biodiversity or extinction. Instead, the major issues of the day centered on nuclear and chemical pollution, Three Mile Island, oil spills, soil contamination, toxic waste, herbicides in South East Asia, and, later, the ozone layer.

So why was Seuss concerned with issues of deforestation and biodiversity? I’m just surmising, but one can make an argument that it was all about the Cold War. We know that Seuss was political and perhaps he picked up on a theme that’s detailed in a relatively recent book titled The Cold War and environmental history: complementary fields by Simo Laakkonen, Viktor Pál & Richard Tucker. The book, published in 2016, sees the Cold War as signifying “a global power struggle over the control of natural resources.” It argues:

The Cold War was not only for the hearts and minds of people, it was also for their mouths and bellies, that is, for food, energy and raw materials . . . In addition to the increasing consumption of natural resources and resulting pollution, the destructive capacity of the weapons of mass destruction compelled human beings to recognise that their activities could ultimately endanger the planet earth. The Cold War was a propagator and framework for the birth of global catastrophism and also for the emergence of a global environmental awareness. Nature, its exploitation and also gradually its protection, opened up yet another front in the Cold War . . .

In fact, some of the areas most impacted by the Cold War have ended up as protected nature preserves. A good example can be found in Germany where former Soviet military bases are being turned into grasslands. You can read all about it here, and, if you find the topic of interest, there are more articles listed at the end of the post.

The Lorax Attacks Corporate Greed and Excessive Consumerism

As more and more trees are cut down, it becomes obvious that the Once-ler only cares about making more and more Thneeds and more and more money, ignoring warnings about the devastation he’s causing. When confronted by the Lorax who now “speaks for the trees,” the Once-ler says:

“Look, Lorax,” I said. “There’s no cause for alarm.
I chopped just one tree. I am doing no harm.
I’m being quite useful. This thing is a Thneed.
A Theed’s a Fine-Something-That-All-People Need!”

Well, one thing leads to another and soon the Once-ler’s Thneeds are jumping off the shelves. 

Confronting the Threat of Communism

The consumerist culture that the Lorax encounters reminds me of the rush to consumerism in the beginning years of the Cold War. The motivation is different though. The Once-ler just wants to make money but, in the early 1950s, some believed that the threat of communism could be countered with consumerism. The US pushed consumerism and manufacturing in order to flood European markets with American goods, aiming to combat communism with refrigerators and washing machines. 

Europeans weren’t the only consumers, however. Between 1945 and 1949, Americans purchased 20 million refrigerators, 21.4 million cars, and 5.5 million stoves, a trend that continued well into the 1950s, peaking in 1959 with a “Kitchen Debate” between Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev and the US Vice-President Richard Nixon.

Nixon took advantage of the debate opportunity to show off the standard of living available to ordinary Americans under capitalism. You can read more about it here and then watch the YouTube video below for a taste of the debate which took place at the opening of the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow on July 24, 1959. The description for the YouTube video points out that “an entire house was built that the American exhibitors claimed anyone in America could afford. It was filled with labor-saving and recreational devices meant to represent the fruits of the capitalist American consumer market.”

Back to The Lorax

Getting back to The Lorax, just as Americans couldn’t buy consumer goods fast enough in the aftermath of World War II, the greedy Once-ler can’t keep up with the demand for Thneeds.

Now, chopping one tree at a time seems way too slow so he invents a Super-Axe-Hacker to speed things up, and soon he’s making Thneeds four times as fast as before. As production increases the air is filled with “smogulous smoke” and the pond is glumped “where the Humming-Fish Hummed.” When confronted with the damage he’s causing, the Once-ler makes clear again that he’s going to just keep on doing what he’s been doing. 

And at that very moment, we heard a loud whack!
From outside in the field came a sickening smack
of an ax on a tree. Then we heard the tree fall.
The very last Truffula Tree of them all!

Past Choices Are Haunting Us

In today’s world the choices we made in the past are haunting us. Here are just a few examples from Robert J. Gordon’s 2016 book titled The Rise and Fall of American Growth (The US Standard of Living Since The Civil War) that show an impact on resource use in the United States. 

• Although the early postwar years reflected a decline in housing quality, gradually there was a turnaround, with an inexorable increase in the average square feet of space in the typical single-family housing unit.
• Suburbs were developed farther from the center city than in most developed nations. Superhighways were built not just to connect cities, but also to facilitate commuting within cities. . . . Except in the densest part of a few central cities, households were forced to use automobiles for shopping, commuting, and travel for all other reasons.
• Particularly after 1970, there was a complete transition from domestic to imported clothing together with a transition to “big-box” mass merchants such as Walmart that helped to achieve a sharp decline in the relative price of clothing. (Think “fast fashion” and its ramifications.)
• Food and food production were also affected as refrigerated transportation was common for meat, and prepared, processed, and frozen food became commonplace. 

Note: If you’d like more specifics about how building and transportation work together, check out this article in Treehugger.

It’s interesting to note that agriculture contributes to greenhouse gas emission and is negatively affected by  changes to the environment as well when conditions disrupt food availability, reduce access to food, and affect food quality. But that’s a story for another day.

I think it’s safe to say that many of us would like a redo. But since that’s not possible, maybe we should take to heart the message the Lorax passed on to the Once-ler by way of Dr. Seuss:

“But now, says the Once-ler,
“Now that you’re here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.
UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It’s not.

Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care.
Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax
And all of his friends may come back.

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The Featured Photo is by Bryan Rosengrant. You can find his work on Flickr.

Here are some more articles related to the impact of the Cold War on the environment as well as post Cold War changes.

Other articles include a National Geographic article on Gunkanjima Island (also known as Hashima Island) near Nagasaki titled Abandoned ‘Battleship Island’ Is Crumbling. Can It Be Saved? The article starts by stating: “When humans left, nature prevailed. On Hashima Island, a 16-acre patch of land off the southern coast of Japan, grass and vines and flowers flourish as concrete and steel wither.”

Abandoned soviet military base. Laima Gutmane. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Skrundas_armijas_pilsētiņa_-_an_abandoned_soviet_military_base_in_Skrunda_-_panoramio_(23).jpg

If you like pictures, you’ll want to take a look at CNN’s photo essay titled Wildlife is flourishing in these demilitarized zones.

An article in The Guardian tells How Wildlife is thriving in the Korean peninsula’s demilitarised zone, noting that “The forces that lock humans out of the DMZ have allowed other species to thrive . . .”

And, finally, the UN Environmental Program documents how “many people think the area around the Chernobyl nuclear plant is a place of post-apocalyptic desolation. But more than 30 years after one of the facility’s reactors exploded, sparking the worst nuclear accident in human history, science tells us something very different. You can read the article here.

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The Lorax is now a Disney Pixar movie

Earth Month 2022 ended just a couple of days ago, so I decided to give it a late sendoff by talking a little bit about the environmental impact of war and its associated activities.

I mentioned this briefly at the end of the post on The Lorax: Ted and the Truffula Trees, but it definitely deserves more of a spotlight.

To start, I’d like to highlight some points from a recent New York Times article: A ‘Silent Victim’: How Nature Becomes a Casualty of War. It’s certainly worth a read.

According to The Times:

Wars destroy habitats, kill wildlife, generate pollution and remake ecosystems entirely . . . There are exceptions. Wars can make landscapes so dangerous or inhospitable to humans . . . that ecosystems have a rare opportunity to recover . . . .

I’ll give you some examples of both scenarios, but let’s start with the destruction associated with the environmental impact of war. These examples are from The Times article.

• In 2011, scientists reported that levels of lead and copper were still elevated in the soil in certain areas around Ypres, a major World War I battlefield in Belgium.
• During the Vietnam War, the US military sprayed toxic defoliants – most notably Agent Orange – over wide swaths of jungle to thin out forests and deprive enemy forces of cover.
• After civil war broke out in Angola in 1975, the country suspended anti poaching patrols. At the same time, the conflict increased access to automatic weapons. The result was a drastic increase in hunting that reduced the number of buffaloes, antelopes, and other target species.
• During Mozambique’s civil war (1977-1992), the population densities of nine large herbivores – including elephants, zebras, hippopotamuses, and buffaloes – declined by more than 90 percent in Gorongosa National Park. A highly invasive shrub spread through the landscape to fill the vacuum.

The Cold War

In addition to the defoliation in Vietnam, the environmental impact of war and its associated catastrophes occurred frequently during the Cold War years.

Perhaps the most publicized is the meltdown at Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. Not only did radiation cause deformities in individual animals, it affected entire populations in the more radioactive areas.

Also of note is the food insecurity and economic instability that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, leading to large increases in poverty rates in Russia. The populations of moose, wild boars, and brown bears also declined, with the population of wild boars decreasing by about 50 percent. A Wildlife Conservation Society spokesperson in Russia stated “we literally ate half of them.”

Nicaragua has seen both renewal and regression. During that country’s civil war, forests along the nation’s Atlantic coast regrew as people fled, abandoning their farms. But as the war wound down, residents returned and deforestation resumed. Twice as much land was denuded as had been reforested earlier.

Repair and Regeneration

National Geographic has a detailed article on Gunkanjima Island (also known as Hashima Island) near Nagasaki titled Abandoned ‘Battleship Island’ Is Crumbling. Can It Be Saved? The article starts by stating:

When humans left, nature prevailed. On Hashima Island, a 16-acre patch of land off the southern coast of Japan, grass and vines and flowers flourish as concrete and steel wither.

There’s a wonderful video to go along with the text.

If you like pictures, you’ll want to take a look at CNN’s photo essay titled Wildlife is flourishing in these demilitarized zones. It discusses changes in the Korean demilitarized zone, the ‘Green Line’, a partition drawn up in the 1960s amid violent clashes between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and the “Purple Line” border between Israel and Syria that’s patrolled by UN forces.

For more on the Korean demilitarized zone, read the article in The Guardian titled How Wildlife is thriving in the Korean peninsula’s demilitarised zone. The piece noted that “The forces that lock humans out of the DMZ have allowed other species to thrive . . .”

And, finally, the UN Environmental Program documents how “many people think the area around the Chernobyl nuclear plant is a place of post-apocalyptic desolation. But more than 30 years after one of the facility’s reactors exploded, sparking the worst nuclear accident in human history, science tells us something very different. You can read the article here.

The Ukraine Today

Unfortunately, the environmental impact of war and its associated defense activities continues. Thanks to The Times, we know some of the areas affected by Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. That country is in an ecological transition zone, home to vibrant wetlands and forests as well as virgin steppe. According to The Times, Russian troops have already entered or conducted military operations in more than one-third of the nation’s protected natural areas.

The Black Sea Biosphere Reserve on Ukraine’s southern coast is a haven for migrating birds.

The reserve is also home to the endangered sandy blind mole rate, the Black Sea bottlenose dolphin, rare flowers, countless mollusks, dozens of species of fish . . .

Recent military activity in the area sparked fires large enough to be seen from space. So while we are shocked and saddened by the human cost of the war, the environmental toll adds to our distress.

Herds of herbivores, including endangered saiga antelopes and Przewalski’s horses, roam in the Askania-Nova preserve, which is currently occupied by Russian forces . . .

The Environmental Impact of War Continues

We just have to turn on our televisions or stream the news on one of our many devices to see the devastating effects of armed conflict. A 2009 study points out that from 1950 to 2000, more than 80 percent of the world’s major armed conflicts took place in biodiversity hot spots  . . . (Thor Hanson: independent conservation biologist)

Dr. Hanson’s take home message:

 . . . if we were concerned about biodiversity and conservation in the world, we need to be worried also about conflict and patterns of conflict.

Unfortunately, many living in today’s world aren’t getting the message.

Do you have thoughts? Scroll down and leave a comment.

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Photographs:

Featured image: Chernobyl by Nick Beresford (UNEP)

Hashima Island by C K Leung on Flickr

Cyprus Buffer Zone by Jpatokal – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5516209

Korean DMZ by Morning Calm Weekly Newspaper Installation Management Command, U.S. Army 

Ukraine Biosphere by Elena Pleskevich on Flickr

Abandoned soviet military base. Laima Gutmane. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Skrundas_armijas_pilsētiņa_-_an_abandoned_soviet_military_base_in_Skrunda_-_panoramio_(23).jpg

 

An Introduction

Toward the end of the Cold War, from 1979 to 1989, the general public first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change. Scientists and government officials had been aware of the problem for many years.

Now we know that the world has warmed more than one degree Celcius since the Industrial Revolution. But did you know that in the decade from 1979 to 1989 we could have prevented the looming crisis? During that ten year period, the world’s major powers came close to endorsing a binding, global framework to reduce carbon emissions — closer than we’ve come since.

Nearly everything we now know about global warming was understood in 1979. At that time, even some of the largest oil companies like Exxon and Shell made efforts to understand what was happening, and they grappled with possible solutions.

During the 1980s, Republicans and Democrats joined in bipartisan support for immediate and far-reaching climate policy. But their endeavors all unraveled.

What happened? Why didn’t we act?

Hopefully, the following selected timeline — with a current update –will provide insight.

1957 – 1978

1957: Hans Suess And Roger Revelle write a paper concluding that

human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future.

Revelle helps the Weather Bureau establish a continuous measurement of atmospheric carbon dioxide on the Big Island of Hawaii. A young geochemist, Charles David Keeling, charts the data. His graph comes to be known as the Keeling curve.

1963: Two weeks after his inauguration, in a special message to Congress, President Johnson explains that his generation “had altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale” through the burning of fossil fuels.

The Johnson administration commissions a study of the subject by his Science Advisory Committee.

1965: President Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee releases its executive report on carbon dioxide, warning of the rapid melting of Antarctica, rising seas, and increased acidity of fresh waters.

The report notes that these changes will require a coordinated global effort to forestall.

1968: An essay titled “How to Wreck the Environment” by Gordon MacDonald, the science adviser to Lyndon Johnson, is published. MacDonald predicts a near future in which

nuclear weapons were effectively banned and the weapons of mass destruction were those of environmental catastrophe.

One of the most potentially devastating of the weapons is carbon dioxide.

Spring 1977 – Summer 1978: The Jasons, a group of elite scientists, meet to determine what will happen once the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles from pre-Industrial Revolution levels.

The Jason report to the Department of Energy titled “The Long-Term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate” includes nightmarish findings. You can find an abstract of the report here. 

1977: The US Energy Department establishes an Office of Carbon Dioxide Effects at MacDonald’s urging.

1978: Page 66 of a technical report on coal notes that

the continued use of fossil fuels might, within two or three decades, bring about ‘significant and damaging’ changes to the global atmosphere.

The report summarizes results of a study of the environmental aspects of 14 of the most prominent coal liquefaction systems, in terms of background, process description, major operations, input and output streams, status, and schedule of system development. You can find out how to obtain the report here.

1979 – 1982

1979: President Jimmy Carter Installs 32 solar panels on the roof of the White House in the wake of the Arab oil embargo. However, he also promotes the production of synthetic fuels — gas and liquid fuel extracted from shale and tar sands.

February 1979: The first World Climate Conference is held in Geneva. Scientists from 50 nations agree that it is “urgently necessary” to act.

Spring 1979: Gordon MacDonald and Rafe Pomerance (deputy legislative director of Friends of the Earth) arrange informal briefings with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Security  Council, The New York Times, the Council on Environmental Quality, and the Energy Department. They also visit President Carter’s top scientist, Frank Press.

May 22, 1979: Press writes a letter to the president of the National Academy of Sciences requesting a full assessment of the carbon-dioxide issue.

Jules Charney, the father of modern meteorology, gathers the nation’s top oceanographers, atmospheric scientists, and climate modelers to judge if the world is, in fact, headed toward impending disaster.

June 1979: At the Group of 7 Meeting in Tokyo, the leaders of the world’s seven wealthiest nations sign a statement resolving to reduce carbon emissions.

1989

April 1989: John Sununu, chief of staff to newly elected President George H. W. Bush, questions the scientific merits of climate change.

Later in the year, Sununu meets with a staff member from the Energy Department and asks:

Why in the world would you need to reduce fossil-fuel use?

The reply:

Because of climate change.

I don’t want anyone in this administration without a scientific background using ‘climate change’ or “global warming” ever again, said Sununu.

Bush defers to Sununu, and his campaign stance on dealing with climate change is reversed.

September 1989: A report tracking global greenhouse-gas emissions is published by the World Resources Institute. It reports that the United States produces nearly a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions, the largest contributor by far. Moreover, its contribution is growing faster than that of every other country.

November 1989: Delegates from more than 60 nations meet in the Netherlands for the first diplomatic meeting to approve the framework for a binding climate treaty. The goal is to establish a global summit meeting to be held about a year later.

Activists  lower the Japanese, American, and Soviet flags, accusing the three nations of conspiring to block the action needed to save the planet.

An initial conclusion: action has to be taken and the United States needs to lead. This doesn’t happen.

Instead, Sununu, with the acquiescence of Britain, Japan, and the Soviet Union, forces the conference to abandon the commitment to freeze emissions.

The final statement notes only that “many” nations support stabilizing emissions.

Updates

According to The New York Times in August, 2018:

More carbon has been released into the atmosphere since the final day of the Noordwijk conference, November 7, 1989, than in the entire history of civilization preceding it.

According to Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, as of spring 2019, there had been no breakthrough in climate physics since 1979, only refinement. But on a positive note, The New York Times  published an article titled “Blamed for Climate Change, Oil Companies invest in carbon renewal (April 9, 2019). Read the article here.

Fast forward to August 2022. The chart from Axios (below) depicts progress from 1988 – 2022

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Much of the  information in this post was derived from an article in The New York Times Magazine published on August 5,1918. You can read the full article, “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change,” here.

You can read the August 11, 2022, Axios article here.

Image by Jody Davis from Pixabay.