• doesn't violate treaties against nuclear warfare
• does less harm
• nuclear weapons are unusable (by world opinion) short of total war
• we have bigger bombs--threatening stance
• what message are we giving to other hostile countries
• what is morally acceptable (public opinion) in a limited war
  

• computer modeling
• understanding feedback systems
• game theory
  
• would it wipe out life on earth?

treating warfare as a science rather than as a threat--some people became uncomfortable with this

That kind of modeling was then applied to other vulnerabilities such as population growth
back to the theories of Malthus about how population growth would inevitably outstrip resources

As the population becomes more dependent on technology it is more vulnerable to wartime attacks on infrastructure
much science fiction about what would happen after a nuclear war

Barry Commoner in a 1964 report: the US should pay more attention to the potentially negative consequences of large-scale projects

To have long term effects, environmental warfare would need to use places where earth systems were already unstable

• earthquakes
• global warming or cooling by manipulating ice sheets

Jaques Ellul: how far should we go with technological mastery over nature?

Rachel Carson also focused on the vulnerability of the earth

1968 Paul Elrlich: The Population Bomb

John Maddox was an example of a scientist who argued against environmental vulnerabilty--the ecological crisis was not a doomsday scenario

1972 publication of The Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome--an informal organization of scholars, businessmen and civil servants.  Predicted that we were going to run out of most resources in the next 50 years or so--20 years for petroleum.