recycling is cute for the homeowner, and might make a ding with respect to the environment. even for businesses there could be some net reduction in environmental impact by virtue of it. it fails in application to heavy metals as by-products to industry and a no disposal policy simply dodges the fact that there needs to be a disposition on safe and environmentally considerate handling of waste. that toxins all come from the earth is a simpleton's conjecture. maybe you could reveal your point if you have one; it escapes me.First of all I am not in favour of dumping anything anywhere. I am a firm believer (and I practice what I preach) in recycling. However folks seem to forget that man didn't create heavy metals. They came from the earth in the first place people!!!
this is bullshit. the repercussions for presuming that we could dump heavy metals at sea are not as rosy as you paint them. now i guess i have to remind that the ecosystems in the ocean are vertically codependent, too. the ocean has a capacity to deal with a great deal of foreign materials introduced to it, and i know that you think that arsenic mercury are natural, no matter their concentration, but you personify the correlation between ignorance and shoulder-shrugging on the gravity environmental concerns.When things are dumped in the deep ocean there is nothing on the benthic plain to be bothered by them. They will stay there till they get subducted and returned to the mantle where in a few million years they will pop out again someplace else.
i'm sure that with respect to your pet concern, the rainforest, that you have seen that folks unaware of what is going on, or what is so bad about the state of things seem more likely to write it off.
i'm not sure if economic agenda will improve ecology. economic activity has the most environmental impact. tenuous, that connection.Prosperity and environmentalism go hand in hand as well I agree. Instead of keeping the Third World the Third World like the pseudo environmentalists want to do. The environmental movement needs to realize that the only long term change that can be affected is to elevate the Third World to First World status. When that gets done 90% of all the environmental issues will clear themselves up. Fewer people, far less pollution, recycling, ethical treatment of the planet...it all comes from the First World nations because the Third World can't defend itself and so is a target for the unethical companies that are out there. And there are many of them...in fact the majority are unethical.
But this methodology is false, will not prevent pollution, will not prevent the destruction of the rainforests, will not reduce populations, will not create "green" jobs, will not do anything that they claim it will. What it will do is cast more people into poverty which will increase all of the environmental strains that are currently in operation.
as to the merits of a c&t. what are your conjectures based on? i have some converse predictions, some are based on some proven successes from such a system, others are based on market responses proven in other mechanisms and which i have no reason to presume aren't transferable. is this like your presumptions about heavy metals?
It is a well founded correlation that wealth and the prosperity that goes with will result in a lowering of birth rates. Everyplace that has seen prosperity on the order that we have in the First World has seen a corresponding drop in birthrates. Even in Catholic areas. It is simple, wealthy people have more entertainment choices open to them and they are not required to produce children to help till the soil.
Industrial activity in wealthy countries is very heavily regulated (why do you think industry is leaving the US to go to China?). It is cheaper to go to China and pollute than it is to keep it clean here. However, if all countries are on the same level playing field then they all have to pay the same amount to keep their respective industries clean. Wealthy people like a clean environment.
This is not rocket science. So long as there are countries that don't regulate the production of waste products the companies will go there. Take away that ability and they all have to comply with the regs or be put out of business.
Now to the heavy metal issue. ALL elemental metals were produced by the earth(well actually the explosion of a supernova but we need not get too technical). The only heavy metal that has been produced by man in any abundance is Plutonium and for a while it was thought that only man could produce it but back in the 1970's early 80's naturally occuring plutonium was found in South Africa. Man certainly refines it which will of course condense it but the metal existed long before man came along.
The ions of heavy metals are so heavy that in general, without much help, once they are in place they stay in place. There are billions of dollars in gold in solution in the worlds oceans but try getting it out. the bonds are so strong that it costs more in energy costs to remove it than the gold is worth. That would be true with all the metals out there once they have gone into solution. The benthic plain of the ocean in thousands of places is absolutely devoid of life. Equally important there is no circulation between the lower levels and the upper levels in many of those areas as well. In those places you can quite safely leave pretty much anything and it will not come back to bother you. We are talking depths of over 5 miles here.
I am involved in mine cleanup so believe me I KNOW what can result with waste run amock, but you are demonstrating a very limited viewpoint. Metals can be safely dumped in certain areas. One place that they should not be dumped is in any water less than 5 miles deep. What we don't need is more myopic hazardous waste people who think that when a pool cleaning company drops a gallon of H2SO4 they should have to scrape up the dirt for thirty feet around and send it to a hazerdous waste dump a thousand miles away at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, when the best way to deal with it is to hit it with water. When mixed with water it breaks down into water and table salt and yet the hysterical HAZMAT people will continue to make those poor business's pay ridiculous amounts of money....for nothing.
That is the point I am trying to make.
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