Global Wildings

Abstract

Militaries are amongst the biggest global environmental players. Militaries are major environmental abusers. All militaries, everywhere, wreak environmental havoc — sometimes by accident, sometimes as “collateral damage,” and often as predetermined strategy. Anywhere in the world, a military presence is virtually the singlemost reliable predictor of environmental damage: wherever there is a military presence (whether a base, a war zone, a storage facility, or a testing facility), one will almost inevitably find environmental damage. From Subic Bay to Goose Bay, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Kuwait, from Gagetown New Brunswick, to the South Pacific atoll of Kwajelein, the evidence of a largely unfettered environmental “wilding” by the world’s militaries is overwhelming and inescapable. If every military-blighted site around the world were marked on a map with red tack-pins, the earth would look as though it had measles.