women histories, incest sexual abuse. institutionalized. But what if ...

the world, could cause lung cancer in every living
human being? Did you know that NASA
has launched almost two dozen plutoniumcarrying
rockets? Did you know that in November
1996, a Russian space probe containing 7-9 ounces of plutonium
fell to earth and that no one has since been able to
find it? Did you know that the part of space called "near-
Earth orbit" has been turned into a giant garbage can with
over seven million pounds of man-made junk—old spacecraft,
satellites and rockets—orbiting the earth; that any
one of these pieces of "space garbage" could slam into a plutonium-carrying
rocket, releasing particles with the potential
to cause death, illness and genetic mutations to all life
forms on earth? NASA has launched the Cassini deepspace
probe, carrying over 72 pounds of deadly plutonium.
The "rational," technological mindset that glorified
war has led to the development of some of the most toxic
substances on earth. According to biologist Sandra
Steingraber, technologies developed for World War II
changed chemistry and physics forever. Not only the
nuclear bomb, but such products as disinfectants and pest
killers, originally developed in secret for germ warfare
entered our lives. After the war, the goals of conquest and
annihilation were transferred from the battlefield to our
kitchens, gardens, forests, and farmlands, though their
long-term effects on humans or the environment were not
known. During the Vietnam War, the offspring of these
chemicals "decimated forests, rubber plantations, and rice
paddies, leaving whole sections of the Earth dead, and institutionalizing
ecocide as an integral part of U.S. military policy,"
writes ecofeminist Irene Diamond. One has only to
read the trade names of some chemical pest controls in
common use on bean and corn fields today—Assault,
Assert, Bullet, Chopper, Conquest, Lasso, Marksman,
Prowl, Squadron, Stomp, and Storm—to see the connections
to war, battle and dominance, says Steingraber.
These triazine herbicides show up as contaminants in
drinking water and as residues on food. Three of
them—cyanazine, simazine and atrazine—are classified
as possible human carcinogens, under particular
scrutiny for their role in breast and ovarian
cancers.
Standing Inventory
Around the world we see other consequences of the
"rational" mind. Taking Bacon's admonition to heart,
ENVIRONMENT
we have tortured the earth almost beyond her
ability to heal. In the doublespeak of the forest
service, "virgin forests" have become
"standing inventory." In the Gulf War, Saddam
Hussein dumped crude oil into the Gulf and eight
hundred oil wells were torched. They burned for months in
the aftermath of the war, creating a biological "dead zone"
and contributing to uncountable future deaths from airborne
toxins.
Around the world, economies, cultures and natural
resources are plundered, so that 20 percent of the world's
population (privileged North Americans and Europeans)
can continue to consume 80 percent of its resources in the
name of progress. This system "converts kangaroos and
whales into dog food, ancient forests into toothpicks, and
the oily black blood and metallic veins of earth into nuclear
missiles, beer cans, and smog," write Sjoo and Mor.
Chlorofluorocarbon-caused ozone holes in the stratosphere
are responsible for tens of thousands of fatal skin cancers.
Worldwide, five million children die of diarrheal diseases
each year caused by polluted water sources. Many tons a
day of banned chemicals such as DDT are exported to
Third World countries from the United States because of
corporate loopholes in the law. The chemicals poison the
inhabitants then return to poison us in imported food or in
the air. Radioactive fallout from accidents such as the one
in Chernobyl, toxins from burning waste, aquifers contaminated
by mining and landfills know no national or political
boundaries. That sweet, warm breeze that lifts your
hair in the afternoon is full of DDT from the Sargasso Sea.
Soon, millions of species will become extinct because of
rainforest destruction. Since 1900, half of the rainforests,
the 'lungs of the earth," have been destroyed. Fifty acres
were eliminated in the time it took me to write this
sentence.
Of course, ecofeminists have never been completely
silenced—and we continue to speak. Matilda
Joslyn Gage talked about the twin oppressions of
women and nature in the 19th century. Simone de
Beauvoir drew the attention of feminists when she wrote,
"But to say that Woman is Flesh, to say that Flesh is Night
and Death...is to abandon terrestrial truth and soar into
an empty sky." In the early 1970s, Francoise d'Eaubonne
was one of the first European feminists to speak to the
clear connection between patriarchal power and
environmental destruction and she is credited with
29 - on the issues