Environmental Damage: A Man-Made Hell on Earth

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

Dante would have felt right at home in Kuwait, a desert paradise that has suddenly been transformed into an environmental inferno. Across the land hundreds of orange fireballs roar like dragons, blasting sulfurous clouds high into the air. Soot falls like gritty snowflakes, streaking windshields and staining clothes. From the overcast skies drips a greasy black rain, while sheets of gooey oil slap against a polluted shore. Burned-out hulks of twisted metal litter a landscape pockmarked by bomb craters, land mines and shallow graves scraped in the sand.

Seen close up for the first time last week, the ecological damage inflicted on the tiny country turns out to be worse than anyone dared imagine. Instead of the 300 burning oil wells predicted in worst-case scenarios, virtually all the country's 1,000 wells were wrecked or set on fire, and 600 or so are still ablaze. For those who live under the resulting thick, sooty clouds, day seems like night and temperatures are 11 degreesC (20 degreesF) cooler than in places where the sky is clear. Some of the well fires could burn for years, spewing out poisonous fumes that choke the air and rake the throat, particularly when the air is still. The miasma poses a special risk to the very young, the old and the infirm. "There is a real danger to human life," says a Western diplomat in Riyadh. "When the winds stop, a lot of people are going to die."

But while the damage to Kuwait is even worse than expected, the environmental effects on the region -- and the planet -- may be less severe than early reports suggested. As the fog of war lifts, it is becoming clear that various interest groups have been using the environment as a propaganda football to score political points.

Even before the fires were set, antiwar activists foretold global catastrophe if Saddam ignited the oil fields. Thick black clouds, some scientists predicted, could reach the upper atmosphere, snuffing out an entire growing season and threatening millions with starvation. During the war, the Pentagon issued what turned out to be exaggerated assessments of oil spills into the gulf, putting Saddam Hussein's acts of ecoterrorism in the worst possible light. Kuwaiti officials appear to be still overstating the amount of oil going up in smoke: the Kuwaitis say they are losing 6 million bbl. per day (roughly equal to 10% of daily global oil use), a figure U.S. experts say is not credible.

The oil spill off the shores of Kuwait, which was widely reported to be the largest in history -- some 11 million bbl. -- is now estimated to be one- quarter to one-twentieth that size, making it smaller than the 1979-80 Gulf of Mexico spill at the offshore drilling rig known as Ixtoc I. Similarly, Carl Sagan's well-publicized prediction that smoke from the oil fires could rise 5 to 10 km (3 to 6 miles) to the stratosphere and blanket the globe has not yet come to pass. So far, the smoke clouds are hugging the ground, drifting in the prevailing westerlies only as far as Pakistan.

Some scientists are still predicting that smoke from the gulf could disrupt the monsoon in the Indian subcontinent and pelt rich croplands there with acid rain. Nonsense, say scientists in New Delhi. Acidic pollutants would probably be neutralized by dust in the Indian air, which tends to be alkaline. Besides, observers have yet to see traces of smoke, and certainly nothing that would disrupt the subcontinent's weather patterns. "The monsoon is too large and powerful a global phenomenon to be affected by one local event," says Vasant Gowariker, a monsoon expert at India's Department of Science and Technology.

That is not to say the environment has not suffered serious harm. The gulf war was the first conflict in which ecoterrorism played a major role in a combatant's battle plan, and even though the fighting lasted only 42 days, it may turn out to be the most ecologically destructive conflict in the history of warfare. Experts are still sorting out the effects on the air, land and sea, some of which may persist for generations to come.

THE BURNING OF KUWAIT

The most pressing problem is posed by the fiery oil wells, which after a month of continuous burning will create enough smoke and soot to cover an area half the size of the U.S., according to some projections. The by-products of combustion include carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and, because of the high sulfur content of Kuwaiti crude, a good deal of sulfur dioxide -- a prime component in acid rain.

The pall causes gagging and choking, and there have been reports of respiratory problems from as far away as Bahrain. Eventually some of the toxic by-products will enter the food chain and work their way up, a phenomenon dubbed petroleum poisoning. "I think the whole region is in for a bath of carcinogenic, mutagenic and possibly teratogenic chemicals," says Peter Montague of Greenpeace, referring to compounds that cause cancer, mutations and congenital deformities.

TRACKS ACROSS THE DESERT

Less evident is the damage to the desert. Although many think of it as a lifeless place, the desert is actually a teeming, though fragile, ecosystem. Home to a variety of spiders, snakes and scorpions as well as larger creatures like camels, sheep and gazelles, it is literally held together by microorganisms, which form a thin surface crust. This crust catches the seeds of sparse shrubs and prevents surface soil from blowing away. Once it is disturbed -- by the maneuvers of a million soldiers, say -- recovery can take decades. The Libyan desert still shows tank tracks laid down in World War II.

Ironically, some parts of the Kuwaiti desert may indirectly benefit from the war. Much of the battle was fought on sandy or stony surfaces that had already been deformed almost beyond redemption by generations of Bedouin shepherds and, more recently, caravans of joyriders and hunters in all-terrain vehicles. The presence of hundreds of thousands of unexploded Iraqi mines in and around Kuwait will make both groups think twice about visiting their favorite haunts, thus giving large stretches of desert a chance to heal.

OIL ON TROUBLED WATERS

In the waters of the gulf, the oil spill now estimated by the Saudi government at 0.5 million to 3 million bbl. has been partially contained, but not cleaned up. Although the thickening sludge has killed thousands of seabirds, debilitated the Saudi shrimp industry and threatened plants and coral reefs along the coast of Kuwait and northern Saudi Arabia, favorable winds have so far kept it well north of the rich marine ecosystems in the bay of Bahrain. These marshy flats are the breeding grounds of large numbers of fish and shrimp and the favorite habitat of the rare dugong, the cousin of the American manatee that was already facing extinction before the war began.

No one knows how long it will take to undo the damage done by the war. Most of the oil in the gulf will probably be left for nature to dispose of, a process that could take decades given the sluggish movement of the water. The job of disarming or exploding the land mines is also likely to go on for years; 50 years after World War II, people are still stumbling on mines in Egypt's western desert.

Work on the burning oil wells should move a little faster. Representatives from several U.S. fire-fighting crews, including Houston's Red Adair Co., were on their way to Kuwait last week to start assessing the damage. But the oil fields must be cleared of unexploded mines before workers can even begin laying pipelines for the tons of seawater the fire fighters will use to cool the burning wellheads. And if the damage to the wells is sufficiently severe, fire fighters may have to drill diagonal relief wells in order to fill them with mud or cement, a capping process that can take months and cost as much as $10 million per well. By their estimates, Kuwait may still be battling oil blazes two years from now.

Environmental groups are calling for fact-finding missions and legal action to discourage future acts of ecowarfare. Their worst nightmare is that the idea of holding nature hostage will spread to other conflicts. "I don't think we can tolerate this happening again," says Michael Renner, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute. "The environment is already under attack from our activities in peacetime." What can be done to prevent recurrences? One possibility: an international agreement that, like a Geneva Convention, would make ecoterrorism a war crime as punishable by law as the murder of hostages or the torture of POWs.

With reporting by William Dowell/Dhahran and Michael Riley/Washington