blatham wrote:george
I think you'd have to agree (actually, I'm sure you would) that the orthodoxy which had to be addressed was assumption that we could dump anything anywhere and it would sink away or float away or burn away, and disappear with no or little trace. That wasn't a surprising orthodoxy, as we homo saps had been doing precisely that for a million years, and the planet is a big place.
I'd argue further that the problematical orthodoxy yet remains in the camp of industry/finance. I'm actually very pessimistic on this point, and think we are more likely to be stupid rather than smart, and continue with an old model because those folks who run the show stand to profit. .
I fully agree with your first paragraph. I think we all rather blithely then regarded rivers, oceans, undeveloped land, and everything 'out there' as infinite in its ability to absorb, without effect, all the debris of our activities. That applied to all of us; good guys like you and me, and the captains of industry as well. It was a continuation of human attitudes and behaviors that had continued for millennia.
With respect to the second paragraph, I believe that all of us have changed our attitudes on this score, but collectively we are having a hard time figuring out how to make wise tradeoffs between what is needed for our real welfare and the needs of the environment. My company has a group that specializes in ecological risk assessments - risks to native plant species, wildlife, and humans, all associated with planned developments. An interesting constant in these studies is that in general the optimal option for plants and animals is the one that eliminates the humans from the scene. That may illustrate an underlying truth about nature (and/or possible hidden biases in our models).
I believe the key point here is the finiteness of both the environments in which our many 'systems' reside, and to which they discharge their waste, and of our systems and the resources they themselves consume. Everything is connected. An excessive remedy in one area inevitably means an inadequate one in another. Excessive limitations imposed on one needed system may lead to the creation of others with far worse effects. We must seek holistic solutions that meet the needs of both humans and the environment and optimize the two simultaneously - and not in competition with one another. Zealots of all stripes must be limited, both of industry and of compulsory environmental regulation.
Rachel Carson's work was focused on the untoward effects of DDT, a cheap and very effective, but environmentally persistent insecticide. It brought about a wholesale reduction in the worldwide incidence of Malaria, then a very serious cause of mortality. Now we find the incidence of Malaria again rising and some African nations threatening to resume production and use of DDT to combat it.
One of the principal applications of GM agriculture is in the development of pest resistant species so we can reduce the use of chlorinated phosphate based pesticides in agriculture. Odd that this benefit is never cited in the somewhat hysterical pieces about 'frankenfoods'. Another is the development of so-called "Roundup ready" seeds - food plant variants that are resistant to the environmentally friendly herbicide, Roundup. With these GM seeds farmers can sow their fields without plowing the soil, relying on the quick-degrading herbicide to kill off competing weeds and permitting natural processes (mostly worms) to aerate and mix the soil environment. This significantly reduces the need for chemical fertilizer and drastically reduces both soil erosion and nutrient runoff into streams and rivers - an enormous environmental benefit that is also overlooked in most of the scare literature.
There are however, some hopeful synergies. All those automobiles will be part of a lifestyle transformation that will quickly lower the birthrate in China. If I am not mistaken demographers forecast a levelling off of world population later this century - a momentous change.
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