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Pollution evolution: what do these environ-mentals really want?
- By Richard Burger
- Published 07/30/2008
- Commentary
- Unrated
Have you ever stopped to think about how definitions of pollution have changed in the last 30 years or so? It started happening about the time environmentalists figured out that there’s lots of money to be made and power to be gained by making sure that no matter what we do, there will always be plenty of pollution to be cleaned up. It’s environmentalist job security.
Maybe that’s being too harsh, but I’ve been wondering exactly what it would take to satisfy environmentalists. How different does the environment have to be? What do they want the environment to look like? I get the impression that they have some vision of the earth in a “pristine” state that human beings somehow have no place in; like there are all these superior, “natural” living things and then there are—ugh—people, that just ruin everything by their mere presence.
But getting back to “pollution,” it used to be that it referred to stuff like whatever was being put into the Cuyahoga River that made it catch fire, or what is being stored in all those allegedly leaky tanks at Hanford that is radioactive. (It’s that place the Democrat presidential candidate has never heard of, which I’m sure should speed up the “clean up,” tremendously if he gets elected.)
Anyway, that kind of pollution has been pretty much taken care of, in this country, at least, with the exception of Hanford, which, being a federal program, will probably be finished in about the same amount of time as it took to create the Grand Canyon. But there’s no doubt that things are a lot better than they were 30 years ago. You would think the enviro-nuts would be settling down a little by this time, but just the opposite is true. Every time I turn around there’s something else that is now considered pollution.
The latest, and for me the most troubling, example is that CO2 is pollution, even though plants have to have it or they die, which would also mean, of course, that anything that eats plants or eats things that eat plants, would also die. Still, CO2 is demonized as one of those evil greenhouse gases we’re incessantly warned about. I just hope none of the people that believe such nonsense find out about the most potent greenhouse gas of them all: water vapor.
New definitions of pollution enter the lexicon all the time. Google the word and you get noise pollution, light pollution, visual pollution, and thermal pollution, to name just a few.
What we seem to be moving toward is a mindset in which the definition of pollution is “Any material, condition, or substance that has ever been or could ever conceivably be connected with, related to, or associated with even the mere mention of human activity.” Or also, “Anything that Al Gore says is bad,” in which case, many Republicans and all conservatives would immediately become pollutants.
What’s really at the core of it all, it seems to me, is mental pollution. That’s caused by getting your head filled with hazardous information produced by individuals contaminated with the concept that the species homo sapiens sapiens is somehow intrinsically alien to the natural order.
If you’d like to respond to this or any column by Richard Burger, you are encouraged to send that response to him at richard@yvnewspapers.com, mail your letter to his attention at The Review Independent, P.O. Box 511, Toppenish, 98948, or call him at 509-865-4055.
Maybe that’s being too harsh, but I’ve been wondering exactly what it would take to satisfy environmentalists. How different does the environment have to be? What do they want the environment to look like? I get the impression that they have some vision of the earth in a “pristine” state that human beings somehow have no place in; like there are all these superior, “natural” living things and then there are—ugh—people, that just ruin everything by their mere presence.
But getting back to “pollution,” it used to be that it referred to stuff like whatever was being put into the Cuyahoga River that made it catch fire, or what is being stored in all those allegedly leaky tanks at Hanford that is radioactive. (It’s that place the Democrat presidential candidate has never heard of, which I’m sure should speed up the “clean up,” tremendously if he gets elected.)
Anyway, that kind of pollution has been pretty much taken care of, in this country, at least, with the exception of Hanford, which, being a federal program, will probably be finished in about the same amount of time as it took to create the Grand Canyon. But there’s no doubt that things are a lot better than they were 30 years ago. You would think the enviro-nuts would be settling down a little by this time, but just the opposite is true. Every time I turn around there’s something else that is now considered pollution.
The latest, and for me the most troubling, example is that CO2 is pollution, even though plants have to have it or they die, which would also mean, of course, that anything that eats plants or eats things that eat plants, would also die. Still, CO2 is demonized as one of those evil greenhouse gases we’re incessantly warned about. I just hope none of the people that believe such nonsense find out about the most potent greenhouse gas of them all: water vapor.
New definitions of pollution enter the lexicon all the time. Google the word and you get noise pollution, light pollution, visual pollution, and thermal pollution, to name just a few.
What we seem to be moving toward is a mindset in which the definition of pollution is “Any material, condition, or substance that has ever been or could ever conceivably be connected with, related to, or associated with even the mere mention of human activity.” Or also, “Anything that Al Gore says is bad,” in which case, many Republicans and all conservatives would immediately become pollutants.
What’s really at the core of it all, it seems to me, is mental pollution. That’s caused by getting your head filled with hazardous information produced by individuals contaminated with the concept that the species homo sapiens sapiens is somehow intrinsically alien to the natural order.
If you’d like to respond to this or any column by Richard Burger, you are encouraged to send that response to him at richard@yvnewspapers.com, mail your letter to his attention at The Review Independent, P.O. Box 511, Toppenish, 98948, or call him at 509-865-4055.