I was interviewed for the Boston Globe piece on environmental interventions and obviously didn’t leave much of an impression. I said I was quite skeptical about the scenario of unwelcomed military interventions on the part of the environment. I recounted some of the history of the Green helmets efforts first by Gorbachev and then by Toepfer that were immediately shot down by G77 and the UN General Assembly. I wrote up this history in “Uncommon Peace” in Environment last year So country concerns about preserving sovereign control of resources remains very strong. This scenario would be a rapid reaction force to help with natural disasters or environmental crisis.

The further step of mustering the will and resources to intervene under an environmental responsibility to protect goes down an even less likely path. If the world can’t even muster a dozen helicopters to stop the genocide in Darfur when the need is so obvious, how can we expect such unity of purpose on much more crimes against the environment that have diffuse impacts?