Posted by
Darth Duke on Wednesday, June 06, 2007 3:16:04 PM
All this talk about global warming (AKA global climate change) is wearing me out. This endless debate about whether it is really happening or not, who and/or what is causing it and whether we can do anything about it is really pointless compared to other environmental problems.
What happened to the concern for more tangible, more apparent problems? Our water, soil, air, plants and animals still need conserving. Whether the global temperature is one degree higher than it was 100 years ago doesn't matter much to a person who can't find safe water to drink.
Where's the push for recycling? Was that last decade's flavor so now we have to find something "new" to beat the public over the head with? Sure there are some recycling centers around if you live in a big enough city but there are still a lot of places where people dump easily recyclable stuff in land fills because they don't have anywhere else to take it. It's getting easier to find products made from recycled material but they still, all too often, cost the same or more than the same things made from "virgin" material so there still isn't much of a real incentive for the cash strapped, bargain hunter to buy recycled. There used to be ad campaigns to encourage recycling. Where did those go? If you don't think recycling and trash management are important, take a look around any city or even small town for that matter. What do you see? Papers, plastic bags, cigarettes (don't get me started on those threats to the environment and our health, that could be a blog by itself), bottles etc. laying all over the place. It looks terrible. Even worse, it messes up the ecosystems of plants and animals. Just because we have put perforations on the six-pack rings doesn't mean there aren't any animals suffering from messing with them. Sure, they don't get stuck in the rings as easily as they used to, but they are still getting hardware disease from trying to eat trash they can't digest. You won't see me bragging about Mexico's environmental progress very often, but one thing I have to give them is that they re-use glass bottles a whole lot more than we Americans do. We used to have all kinds of places where you could buy pop, beer etc. in glass bottles then redeem the empties. Those empty bottles were then cleaned and refilled. What happended to that deal? It's a whole lot easier and environmentally friendly than selling so many things in plastic then having the vast majority of the empties getting thrown in the landfill. The ones that are recycled, have to be melted down and remolded into something else.
What about cleaner water? It's a crying shame that there are so many places in this country where you are better off wasting upwards of $2 a 20 ounce bottle (depending on the brand) for bottled water than you are taking your chances by drinking from the tap. Water in so many places tastes terrible and has all kinds of chemicals in it. We need to do more to control water pollution in both rural and urban places. Not all polluting runoff comes from crop fields and factories, we need to start working on over-fertilized lawns, golf courses, parks and cemeteries too. Did you know the typical lush green lawn has more phosphorus and nitrogen per square foot than a typical corn field? That's because home owners and landscapers apply fertilizer to their lawns at the same rate or sometimes higher every year without bothering to check the nitrate and phosphate levels of their lawn's soil. More and more farmers do soil testing in their fields, partly due to education from university and government agents and partly due to economics since it's a waste of money they barely have enough of to apply phosphorus fertilizer to a soil that is full of it. Meanwhile, homeowners watching tv are encouraged every spring by fertilizer companies to pour on the Scotts turf builder or Miracle Grow if they want to have the greenest lawn and be the envy of the neighborhood. When was the last time you saw a commercial for soil and water testing kits for lawns? The excess fertilizer that is not used by the grass has to go somewhere and that somewhere is down the storm drain and into the water system.
How about soil erosion? All the food we eat, much of the fiber we use to make clothes (like those nice cotton t shirts you wear) rely on having an ample supply of healthy soil to grow plants in. Every time the wind or rain washes "mud" from a crop field, lawn, golf course, construction site etc. it is carrying away more of the most productive part of the soil, the A and B horizons. Once the A and B horizons (AKA topsoil) is carried away, all that is left is the infertile C horizon or subsoil. The subsoil has very low organic matter, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and trace mineral content compared to the lost topsoil. This requires the grower to try to make up the difference in expensive fertilizer applications. Whether he/she is using chemical or organic (AKA manure) fertilizer there is still a lot of cost involved. There is also increased risk of runoff since the lack of organic matter in the subsoil makes it harder to keep the fertilizer in place.
These and other issues have not gone away just because the media and far too many researchers and activists are focusing on global climate change. Let's get back to solving these problems before we loose any more clean water, fertile soil, trashless land or clean air.