A Few Good Species

Abstract

Andrew Ross If there has been one constant in the history of science, it is the relationship of applied research and technology to military force. Nothing belies the myth of pure science more than the evidence that it has served as the handmaiden of warfare or, in the period of the national security state, as a central component of the permanent war economy that continues to sustain elite interests among the major powers and their clients. We all know about science's utility to the military trade of destruction, but what happens when the military is charged with utilizing science to repair the destructive consequences of that trade? The euphemism of the "peace industry" took on a new life after the cessation of the Cold War at a time when the security establishment, deprived of its staple of Manichaean ideological conflict, turned in the direction of environmental considerations and elevated "environmental security" to the forefront of its global overviews. The result, by no means conclusive, is the outcome of a messy encounter between the functional ethics of ecological science and the institutional mentality of warmaking.