"The uplift is due to the "quiet Chernobyl" environmental disaster that struck the region in the 1960s, when humans diverted two rivers that flowed into the Aral Sea for irrigation, scientists say."
Which humans? That is a very imprecise word. The correct phrase is "Soviet socialist economic planners." The largest environmental disaster in recent history was the result, not of capitalism, or individual greed, but of bureaucrats who ignored even what little pricing information was available in a socialist economy to make very bad decisions.
They diverted those rivers to grow cotton, what Stalin called "white gold." As the Aral Sea evaporated, the fisheries that provided employment for many in the region ended. To keep the people packing fish employed, the Soviet Union flew fish in from the Arctic Ocean. You know that costs of that in a market economy would have made for golden cans of fish. This would have ended any capitalist attempt at ameliorate of the disaster.
Environmentalists are very reluctant to point fingers at a system that regarded capitalism as the great evil.
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