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- #161
But who bothers to haul them out to the middle of the ocean? Nuclear waste and all kinds of other toxins stay put when you dump it, too, but the total effect is accumulative. I would like to be able to eat all the fish I want without worrying about mercury poisoning etc. again. And clean up of toxic dumps in the ocean is not easily accomplished either.
I agree that care and conservation should be taken re the rain forests too, but it is not true that rain forests don't regenerate themselves. Studies done show that a cleared tract will usually reforest itself within 65 years if left alone; more quickly if given a bit of help (reseeding etc.) To return to completely virgin condition of course takes a lot longer but that is not a huge problem. Of course we want to retain virgin rain forest, but always there must be consideration for human needs too. There are very few virgin forests left in the USA, for instance, but we have plenty of forest land.
I still say that prosperity along with a good ethical sense of right and wrong is the very best protection for the Earth's environment.
i fish tuna. it wont matter how far offshore toxins are dumped. the ocean is not the place.
call me a patriotic, but one of the biggest nags about the global warming debate, is that it has been fashioned to demonize US environmental policy. I think that it takes more than trusting people's good ethics to protect the environment. we might have westwall dumping his sluice juice offshore under uninformed presumptions of harmlessness.
what we have in the US is this balance between environment and society, which europe, for example, simply does not believe in. onus for environmental care lies more heavily on our businesses. it is the american way. we will mandate that all shopping bags at the grocery are biodegradable. in europe, they'll charge you for bags at the checkout. we'll adopt higher emissions standards, in europe, they'll levy a congestion charge in the name of the environment, then interpret diesels to be less emmissive.
what is certain is that the government has to set and enforce standards for the environment, so that companies can focus on being ethical to their clients, and complicit to laws which inform and direct their environmental policy. companies cant and wont take that upon themselves.
No company should be able to intentionally or carelessly pollute shared land, air, or water with impunity. But you're right that there always has to be an intentional separation between protecting human rights and otherwise allowing human to live their lives as they choose.
And sometimes it is so stupid as to be mind boggling. Such as not allowing home owners to clear the brush around their own property lest they might disturb the habitat of some endangered rat. Not only does that violate every Lockean principle of property ownership, but it only ensures that the property will burn down along with the rat's habitat when a wild fire gets going. It's nuts.