From the October/November 2008 issue of Plenty:

If you can make it through this downer of a documentary without drowning your misery in a bottle of Agent Orange, you'll come away knowing a whole lot more than you ever wanted to about war's impact on the environment -- and that's just one of the reasons you should watch it.  Sure, your middle school history class covered Hiroshima and the Kuwait oil spills.  But did you know that Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown thinks we could restore the earth's ecosystems and fight climate change for $161 billion -- a mere third of the annual US military budget?  Or that only a small patch of the lush pistachio tree forests that once blanketed Afghanistan remains today, in large part due to war-induced poverty and social unrest?  Or that sixty-odd WWII ships sunk by the Japanese are lying like ticking time bombs on the ocean floor, just beginning to leak the tons of cargo oil they'd been carrying when taken down in combat?  Or that in one hour, a single F-16 fighter jet uses twice as much fuel as the average American uses in his or her car over the course of a year?  It goes without saying that Scarred Lands falls closer to the suicide-inducing end of the spectrum than would, say, Happy Feet, but it's well-made, fresh, and compassionate.  You'll agree by the end that the environment is actually war's silent casualty.  What's more, you might  even want to get up and do something about it. - Tobin Hack