Do You Know?

John C. Darvill

1992

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 1st quarter 1992, No. 326

... The Ozone hole is getting larger. According to a U.N. advisory panel, serious atmospheric ozone depletion has spread from the polar regions to the temperate zones and is far worse than anyone thought. It now covers almost all of North America, Europe, the area that was the Soviet Union, Australia, New Zealand, and much of Latin America. Previously CFCs caused some ozone loss in the temperate zones during winter and early spring, but now there also seems to be significant decreases in summer when people expose the most skin for the greatest amount of time. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had predicted that ozone loss would cause 200,000 additional skin-cancer deaths in the U.S. alone over the next fifty years; this was before the issue of this latest report. Even the enjoyment of the summer sun now poses a hazard; what havoc we have produced in mindless attempts to maintain a Price System -- its very existence threatens ours.

... Burning oil used for fuels is the primary cause of lead pollution in the United States, this according to an environmental study recently released. The study was undertaken by a group consisting of: National Resources Defence Council, Sierra Club, Izaak Walton League of America and the Hazardous Waste Treatment Council. The study said that just 5% of the 5.3 billion litres of used oil generated each year from cars and industrial equipment is refined into clean oil. Approximately 56%, or 2.96 billion litres, that is intended for recycling is merely diluted with clean oil before it is resold and burned for residential and commercial use. This results in the release of almost 272 tons of lead into the air every year. The study further reported that 36% of used oil is dumped into landfills or storm sewers. Lead has been linked to physical and mental impairment among youths. Ponder that for awhile.

... Because of new recovery techniques, made possible by modern technology, the U.S. is in the midst of its greatest gold boom, and the U.S. is now the world's second biggest gold producer, next to South Africa. This year some 10 million ounces will be recovered, a significant increase over the 3.9 million ounces unearthed by the miners with burros in 1852, the peak year of the first gold rush. More than 400 million acres administered by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are open to mining claims. As a result of this, considerable damage has been done to the environment. The U.S. Bureau of Mines estimates that 10,000 miles of rivers have been contaminated by mine wastes. Approximately 3.6 billion tons pile up each year, largely immune from federal hazardous wastes regulations. Acid drainage and metallic poisons seep continually from old diggings. Cadmium, nickel, lead, mercury, arsenic, contaminate rivers, lakes and soil. Something like 500,000 acres of worked-out claims now lie abandoned. The biggest project in the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund is the abandoned Berkeley open-pit copper mine in Butte, Montana. To clean up more than 240 million cubic yards of toxic wastes carried along 130 miles of river and spread over thousands of acres will cost $1.5 billion. Free enterprise at its finest.

... In a report recently released by the Federal Government of Canada, it was found that three-quarters of Canada's chlorine consuming pulp mills are dumping wastes lethal to fish into our rivers and seas, spreading poisons as far away as 1,400 kilometres from their source. The report says that the mills effluent remains deadly to fish even at concentrations as low as 3% waste and 97% water. At even lower concentrations, as little as one half of one percent effluent, there are sub-lethal effects such as reproductive problems. Canadian mills dump one million tons of chlorine based wastes into the environment annually, a soup of at least 250 compounds, some still unidentified. If the time ever comes when they decide to clean up this mess, guess who will be stuck with the bill? Companies pollute; the community pays -- and in more ways than one -- these poisons affect us all.

... So it goes, an almost daily litany of the continued assault on our environment, our home. If all of today's problems had occured in a short space of time the outcry would have been tremendous. But it is happening slowly over a period of years, and most people come to accept it. However, the accumulation over time is deadly, and the effect upon our livelihood -- and our future well-being is, or should be, deadly to contemplate. We are gambling with the future of ourselves and, most definitely, that of our children and grandchildren. For nearly sixty years Technocracy has been warning of the consequences of the abuse of technology that occurs in an attempt to perpetuate an obsolescent system based on price and commodity eveluation, a system that has long ago outlived its usefulness, and now threatens our very existence. We have everything we need to overcome our problems; what is needed is to eliminate the interference -- money.

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