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Click-bait headline from BBC. TL;DR: Penguins are not heavy enough to set off landmines left by Argentinians in Falklands War. Plenty are left, now the British
by ptaipale 9y ago
Click-bait headline from BBC.
TL;DR: Penguins are not heavy enough to set off landmines left by Argentinians in Falklands War. Plenty are left, now the British government has to clear them due to Ottawa convention, and this will disrupt penguins and the ecosystem.
- gpvos 9y agoYes, the title is unfortunate. The conflict between the Ottawa convention and the environment is the interesting bit.
- saalweachter 9y agoEh, I don't know that I would really blame the Ottawa convention. I think it's more sad-larious that we can't just not despoil an area unless it's protected by landmines.
- duncan_bayne 9y agoIt's only a conflict until you base your value judgements on human flourishing. Then it becomes a relatively easy question - does humanity benefit from having the land mines removed? Pretty sure that anyone living in or around minefields has the answer to that one.
- ptaipale 9y agoSomeone living around minefields answers in the BBC story: "Falkland Islanders weren't enthused by the idea, to put it bluntly," says Barry Elsby, a member of the Falklands Legislative Assembly. "We would rather have left the minefields as they were. They are all clearly marked, clearly fenced. No civilian has ever been injured. We said to the British government, 'Don't spend the money here, go to some other country where they have a much greater need to free up farming land.'" "Unfortunately," Elsby adds, "the British government have signed up to the Ottawa convention, which puts a duty on them to do this." It looks a somewhat similar nature reserve to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which also acts as a superb nature reserve (also a BBC story): http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160421-the-chernobyl-exclusion-zone-is-arguably-a-nature-reserve http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160421-the-chernobyl-exclus...
- duncan_bayne 9y agoWow. I'm genuinely surprised to find _anyone_ okay with living near minefields. My opinions are probably coloured by growing up with Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees as childhood friends. Their families had strong, and uniformly negative, opinions about landmines. Sounds like the circumstances were very different.
- ptaipale 9y agoObviously. The main difference in circumstances is indiscriminate use near farming lands and dwellings. Landmines can be used properly or improperly. If you lay them properly, map them, and clear them when not needed, they're not any more risky than the typical remains of war (unexploded bombs and shells); less so in fact (considering Molotov breadbaskets scattered by artillery or air). The Ottawa convention will be observed by those parties who anyway would have used mines responsibly (and thereby would have had a cheap, domestic defensive weapon, instead of paying big bucks to high-tech munition makers). And those parties who we can expect to behave irresponsibly didn't join the convention in the first place.
- sitharus 9y agoI suspect the title is referencing a monty python sketch about an exploding penguin. I'd find the sketch but I'm on limited mobile data at the moment, but I'm sure YouTube has it.