Requiem for Raped and Weeping Earth

Scant months ago, one would have thought mankind knew all there was to know of tyrants with their deceits and infamies, great and petty.

But the disintegration of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the beginning of the dissolution of South African apartheid have revealed something unexpected: Along with their crimes against humanity, the tyrants of our own time have committed terrible wrongs against the Earth itself. Their illusory utopias were, as we now see, sustained through the callous plunder of their unborn children’s environmental patrimony.

The stories and photographs coming out of the ruins of the Eastern Bloc are horrifying. Many of its rivers are open sewers; its air is foul with fumes from outdated industrial and energy facilities fueled by dirty coal; forests are dying; ground water and soil have been poisoned by heedless discharge of chemical wastes. The conditions in sections of the Soviet Union appear even worse. Two recent disasters there--the contamination from Chernobyl and the draining of the Aral Sea--are among history’s worst environmental catastrophes.

As a report issued by the Worldwatch Institute documents, the situation in South Africa differs only in scope. To maintain its irrational system, Pretoria has herded half of all black South Africans onto 13% of the country’s land. The consequence has been the transformation of these so-called “homelands” into deserts.

To finance such injustice, South Africa relies on a mining industry whose safety and pollution record is the worst in the Western world. Unable to obtain other fuels because of its international isolation, Pretoria gets more of its energy from coal than any other country but North Korea. As a result, sulfur dioxide emissions are higher than those in East Germany and--as the accompanying chart shows-- white South Africans are the world’s highest emitters of carbon, a major contributor to the greenhouse effect.

This is powerful testimony to the lunacy of injustice--and a chilling reminder of the damage it ultimately does us all.

CARBON EMISSIONS

Carbon polution from coal (tons per capita) South Africa (White): 9.3 United States: 5.0 Soviet Union: 3.7 Japan: 2.1 China: 0.6

Source: Worldwatch Institute