Pollution issues with old army base in Greenland

I guess the main question really is "who should pay for the clean-up"?

Maybe the Germans? but that didn't work out so well with the treaty of Versaille.

KTK

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/wwii-era-arctic-military-base-polluting-greenland-1.3756786

 

Why did the Greenlandese leave all that stuff laying around to begin with? It was quite obvious the US Army had left and wasn't going to come back and clean up the mess. Sounds like a lot of people around here sitting around waiting for FEMA to come and save them. After cleaning up the mess, they should've presented the bill to the US Embassy people, or the UN or to Al Gore. Of course none of those entities would have reimbursed them for the bill, but at least they would have gotten some press out of it and some notice from the liberals who live for stuff like this.

Don't get me wrong, the Army should've picked up after themselves before skipping town. But since that didn't happen, why sit around wait for someone else to come do it?

 

I figure that we here in North America did more than our fair share in both WWI and WWII.

Not saying that gives us a walk on all errors made back then but maybe a bit of gratitude would be in order and some clean up by th Danish would not be excessive.

KTK

 

Well, at least it's covered in snow most of the time.

 

This is a modern issue. In 1946 the U.S helped rebuilding Europe with the Marshall Plan, but nobdy cared about cleaning Greenland those days . Nowadays Greenland is more fashionable and suddenly one finds out human presence polluted the area.
It's not a matter of Gratitude , not to mention the Danes were not directly liberated by the US.

 

HI Skipper,

Some times it seems to me that the USA does not get the thanks nor gratitude it deserves. So often it seems to me that other nations seem to have their hands out for a free bee, like some rich uncle that folks figure should be paying and paying.

In this case the mess may of been caused by the Yanks but why were they there? To get on a high horse at this stage just doesn't seem right.

I think that a lot of the world takes the US for granted and does not give them the credit they deserve.

Let them screw up and that is all over the news, but when they do good not much is said.

KTK

 

Maybe the Army left it there on orders from the State Department out of spite. Sometime after WW2, the US offered to buy Greenland from the Danes, but they didn't want to sell for some reason.

 

Why would you want to sell it, when you are rolling in bacon?

 

They sold us the Virgin Islands in 1917, so I figured they'd be game for another big windfall, especially after the German occupation had ended just a few years before.

 

Can you still get that canned bacon I think it was called "Tulip". Great stuff for camping.

KTK

 

As skipper said Greenland is becoming more in demand. Large deposits of ores, minerals , etc have been know for some time and are soon to be exploited. I think I read China had leased some of it and bigger pollution lies head but it offers jobs and money too. The dilemma of modern mankind. People want Audi A6 twin turbo cars and pristine environments. Clearli I exaggerate but no by much. Truthfully more and more people want a better life and we do have to live on the same planet. Perhaps one of our bigger long term problems.

Truthfully I am as hypocritical as the next guy and would love an Audi A 4 and want clean land and air too. But will not get either one

 

As to Greenland, in most area's of the world where WWII was fought 'leftover's' were either scavenged of anything remotely useful by the local population or fairly 'rapidly' succomed to natural degradation from weathering. This is not something likely to happen in Greenland due to extreme cold weather. In real terms the Greenland base had more in common with a time capsule and climate and economic conditions have opened that capsule.

On the grander scale its a matter of the human condition. We are compelled to refashion our world to our liking and in doing so it in itself creates problems not anticipated. We then remake this new world, with all its flaws, into something new which sparks another cycle.

I, like many on this forum lived through the latter stages of the last great threat to humanity, Nuclear Armageddon, and can remember doomsday clock's, duck and cover, civil defense shelters et all. Gen X and Millennial's who see pollution and climatic issues in the same manner now probably look at 'our' artifact's, fears and custom's as some strange, hard to imagine life style in the way I did when visiting Colonial Williamsburg as a teenager.

The point is we tend to create problems in slow motion and tend to solve them in the same way, all the while bemoaning the sky is falling and we are running out of time. We strive to create the perfect world for our descendant's, not realizing it has always been our descendant's who fix our utopia's only to leave problems for their children to tackle.

 

Most countries in the world think they do not get the credit they deserve. It drives to a lot of frustration. The Russians should get more credit too, so does the UK , the Canadians etc... Gratitude is one thing and has nothing to do with this event. The U.S. also owes gratitude to many countries . Put it this way: the fact that one likes a friend and that he helped out , does not allow him to take a leak in one's back garden for ever. We are just talking about two diffrent things.

Just one example which shows to what extend the Danes like Amercians :they even celebrate July 4th.

http://articles.latimes.com/1989-07-02/travel/tr-4522_1_united-states
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/0704/Why-are-Danes-celebrating-the-Fourth-of-July

 

A lot of people seem to forget that when the USA pulled out of a country or area after WW II, they offered the facility to the host country. If the host country accepted, the USA left EVERYTHING. It was the host country responsibility to decide what to do with the stuff left. Sounds like to me that Greenland wanted it, but then for whatever reason decided they did not want to dispose of the waste.

Just my 2 cents worth

 

After most wars, the US gets rid of a lot of "surplus" items like that. I've read that thousands of wooden barracks that were built during the war years were auctioned off for $1.00 a piece just to clear the land it sat on. Many buildings were moved off post, others were torn down and the wood used to assist in the post-war house building boom.