Weapon with Wings
Morgan’s “elsewhere” sidebar sends me to George Monbiot’s screed on airplanes, “A Weapon with Wings”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1107861,00.html. Monbiot’s take:
bq. Tomorrow should be a day of international mourning. December 17 2003 is the centenary of the world’s most effective killing machine.
Silly me; I thought that would have been the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. Consider:
| Task | Airplanes | ICBMs |
| Delivering WMDs: | Slow, easy to target | Fast, hard to target |
| Reliabilty: | Human pilots can freak out, disobey orders, and/or snort coke | Computer Pilot merely processing 1s and 0s, has no moral hangups, cannot snort coke |
| Transport injured: | Yes | Not as constructively |
| Deliver medicine to rural locations | Yes | Not as constructively |
|
| Tourism potential | Significant | Tourists shot |
| Economic Benefits (Construction) | Significant | Significant |
| Economic Benefits (Departure Site) | Significant | Minimal |
| Economic Benefits (Arrival Site) | Significant | Ooops. Was there an economy here? |
| Cultural Impact | Increases mingling of various cultures | Ooops. Was there a culture here? |
| Environmental Impact (local) | Noise and higher concentrations of carcinogens | Ooops. Was there an environment here? |
| Environmental Impact (global) | Tens of thousands of planes increase global warming over time | Handful of nuclear ICBMs can cause nuclear winter, wiping out most life on planet in a few short years |
Me? I think Monbiot’s overstated his case a little.
