My days of environmental despair
Posted: February 11th, 2008 | Author: emliner | Filed under: Business, Environment | No Comments »
I don’t know if it’s having a baby or what, but lately I can’t shake this fear of looming environmental crisis. The trigger was a book called “The World Without Us,” by Alan Weisman. It’s a beautifully written, lyrical book about the potential transformations of our planet if We, the people, were to just disappear.
The first chapter immediately hooked me: The fate of hyper-urbanized New York City and all of its subways and concrete and glass buildings. I love imagining the city as it was discovered by the Dutch, as much as I love discovering those little pockets of urban decay that hint at what they city was 100 years ago. Places like the Gowanus Canal and the Brooklyn Waterfront. But, to imagine us completely gone is another thing all together. As I was reading the book in the subway, it was nerve-wracking to read that without pumps our brittle subway system would flood completely within days, done in by long-buried natural springs eager to reclaim their rightful place on the topography. Think the potholes are bad now? Streets built above subways would quickly erode and collapse. Shockingly, a city that seems impervious to nature would crumble as grasses and trees slowly but surely find places to root and germinate.
It’s exciting to imagine nature’s reclamation of New York’s concrete expanse. But, realizing how much of our footprint would otherwise remain is truly frightening. Everyone has seen An Inconvenient Truth. We know about climate change. But, have you ever really thought about the impact of plastics? Well, their toxic little particles are literally everywhere—even in your exfoliating soap—and they just don’t disappear. Little plastic pieces will be floating around in the oceans for millions of years, affecting any species that don’t adapt to the toxins. Ever really thought about what we do with nuclear wastes? Well, it’s frightening, but I encourage everyone to read up.
My bleak environmental perspective took another turn for the worse when I received the latest National Geographic in the mail. Apparently, lots of the electronics and computers that we get rid of (even the things that we put the effort into recycling or discarding of safely) end up in the third-world where the poor scavenge through them for scrap materials like copper and lead, unwittingly exposing themselves to extremely dangerous toxins. It’s terrible to know that the industrialized world is exporting it’s environmental burden. It also left me wondering if there is really anything we can do on an individual level, aside from the impossibility of being a non-consumer.
The latest upsetting news is: Biofuels just aren’t as green as advertised. The thrust here is that the production of ethanol and corn bears a greater environmental cost (on degraded farm land, water, etc.) than the benefits of clean gas that it’s supposed to provide. As a skeptic, it just seems that the environmental cause is being hijacked by people with profitable interests. In this case, the farm industry.
Aside from being as environmentally-aware as possible, I don’t know what can be done. I don’t have to use plastic bags (or at the very least I can reuse them). I can use mass transit. I can turn off the lights. I can recycle. But without some sort of environmental catastrophe to spark a massive change in attitude, I’m pessimistic that corporations, governments and individuals will sacrifice convenience, comfort, and previously-vested financial interests for sustainability. For my son’s sake, I hope I’m wrong.
Updated: (Feb 21) More news on ethanol demand having negative effects on food prices and the environment (from Bloomberg).