The devil and the deep blue sea
'Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine There was a potent irony in the fact that while America's deadly cargoes of nerve gas were slowly making their way to the ocean for 'disposal' in deep water, can- i4ers of dangerous chemicals supposedly wifely dumped at sea long ago should have been washed up on the south coast of Britain. Both events illustrated the dangerous tendency of authority, and not- ably military authority, to act with arro- gant shortsightedness when dealing with potentially catastrophic materials. These events were followed by fresh attention in the press to the disturbing scale of the dumping of poisonous waste from industry and the armed forces in the waters around the British coasts.
Many people must again have been brought to realise that modern man's degradation of his natural environment arises from a willingness to take risks —or to allow posterity to take them— for the sake of short-term convenience. This attitude persists even when the risks are on a colossal scale and cannot be accurately estimated in advance. Future generations may look back with bitter- ness upon this as the great. disastrous failure of the twentieth century mind and imagination.
The nerve gas affair may be seen primarily as a reminder of what we are doing to our surroundings. But it hap- pens also to be the latest manoeuvre in a continuing war which the American mil- itary forces have been fighting against the public on the one hand and against nature on the other. Back in the 1950s, the con- taminated waste products from America's biggest nerve gas factory near Denver, Colorado, were casually dumped into open ponds. In retrospect, it seems in- credible that scientists capable of devising materials to exterminate all life on earth should have forgotten that ponds have an unfortunate tendency to leak. But ap- parently they had; the ponds duly leaked: and wastes carried away by local streams killed livestock and destroyed vast areas of sugar beet. In 1961, following a crescendo of local complaints, it was decided that in future such waste should be dumped down a 12,000 foot hole. The hole was drilled down to hard rock; liquid wastes were in- jected into it at the rate of about six million gallons a month; and within a matter of weeks Denver was struck by a series of earthquakes. Four years later, when cause and effect had been apprec- iated, public concern over increasing pro- perty damage forced the army to suspend operations. Even so. the earth tremors did not stop until much of the waste had been removed.
By this time, however, the military authorities' original lighthearted treatment of the matter had been further modified by the fact of the population explosion. The nerve gas factory in the wilderness suddenly found itself surrounded by urban sprawl, and the new arrivals were not fired with enthusiasm for nerve gas at the bottom of their gardens. They even dared to say so, pointing out that a stray bullet, an earthquake, a bolt of lightning or an aeroplane crash could rupture a storage tank and wipe out the whole sur- rounding population. To this the army spokesmen retorted that an accident on a calm day would produce only 'limited' fatalities: but there is also a limit to the extent to which even the us army can defy public opinion, and last year it was finally agreed that most of the nerve gas from Denver and from several other stores around the country would be removed, first by rail and then in ships which were to be scuttled at sea.
Initially opposition arose less from a concern for ocean ecology than from the fears of residents of the large cities along the proposed rail routes. The official story was, of course. the usual one that the danger was minimal, and statistically this was no doubt correct. But the public might have expected that exceptional precautions would be taken. Again it seems incredible in retrospect: but nothing of the sort was originally intended. It is not surprising that a Federal court judge called the affair 'a tragedy of errors' and a Congressional committee report referred to 'unbelievable negligence.'
Since then, the dismay has spread across frontiers and is chiefly aroused by the incalculable possible future ellects which this poisoning of the sea might lead to. But many of the nerve gas weapons had at an earlier stage in this deplorable story been sealed in concrete, so it was impos- sible to obtain access in order to neutralise the gas (which was what the American National Academy of Sciences advised). Abandoning the poison to the deep, and hoping for the best, was probably the only course open. But at least it can be said now, and it needs to he said very firmly by people and their governments. that in future there can be no defence for such hazardous expedients. The usual argu- ment is that they are cheaper than other methods. This is unacceptable. They may even also be less dangerous in some cir- cumstances—but only because a long term danger is exchanged for a short term danger; and, what is most important. the long term dancer is unknowable. No one can tell the full future consequences of Tuesday's assault upon the sea around us: and a great many people in authority seem not to care.
The lesson of this grisly episode is that some means must be found of imposing a greater sense of responsibility—to this and
to future generations—anon those who at present scatter so lightly the lethal by-
products of technological ingenuity. So far as the poisoning of the land and the air is concerned, this is a proper duty of government. Indeed. it is one of the paradoxes of the age that governments should be permitted to interfere with the minutiae of private life but have somehow been allowed to evade what is a prime function of the state, namely the preser- vation of its territory. But in the matter of depositing massive wastes at sea the law of no country prevails. The British government, for example. in theory. keeps an eye upon what is being done off our shores, but dumping takes place outside territorial limits. It may be that some new international convention is reouired: it may be that an international conference could produce ideas for better control: at any rate it is beyond argument that the present unthinking conversion of this planet into a poisonous rubbish heap is an offence against God and man.
Previous page
