Articles by Geoff Dabelko

Environment and forgotten humanitarian stories

Doctors Without Borders, or Medecins Sans Frontieres, has published its top ten underreported humanitarian stories of 2004. Many are from active conflict zones such as Chechnya, Colombia, Northern Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Conflict is a recent memory and simmering threat in others like Liberia and Burundi. Still another is a disease -- resurgent tuberculosis. Ethiopia and North Korea present tragic tales of malnutrition and suffering.

So where is the environment in these stories? In too many of these places ...

They met on the Prius showroom floor …

Environmentalists were there to lighten their ecological footprint. Neocons were there to lighten the fat Saudi pocketbook, full of petro dollars that fund terrorism. According to Robert Bryce, writing in Slate, the strange bedfellows have come together to advocate measures that would increase car fuel efficiency, lessen foreign oil dependence, and pump up renewables.

While Bryce pitches the "sleeping with the enemy" angle, the key point is there are multiple, compelling reasons to aggressively pursue (and for the government to subsidize) energy efficiency, renewables and alternatives to fossil fuels, and reduced dependence on overseas oil. Greens have often worked this issue with one hand tied behind their backs.

Terrorists drive wind power

The surge in residents at Guantanamo Bay (from 2,500 to 10,000 in the past three years) has driven up energy needs for the self-sufficient U.S. Navy base that is a small slice of Cuba.

The LA Times (free registration required) reports that four new windmills and turbines, producing 950 kilowatts of electricity apiece, will soon replace diesel generators as the base's primary source of energy.  The need to be water self-sufficient drives extensive desalination operations on the base, creating the need for all that wind power.

Now if the war on terrorism could only extend that drive for energy independence to the mainland as well!

The other axis of evil

"Poverty, disease and environmental decline are the true axis of evil," according to Christopher Flavin, head of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute. Speaking January 12 at the National Press Club, Flavin presented a global security agenda as described in the newly released State of the World 2005: Redefining Global Security.

Unless the world takes action to improve economic and environmental conditions around the world, security officials will face an uphill battle in dealing with the many consequences of vulnerable societies -- from wars and terrorism to heightened impacts from natural disasters.

This year's State of the World takes on this "true axis of evil" with a range of arguments on how environment, health, and demography constitute a global security agenda.