Pollution began to really impact the environment during the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution started to crank out some solid goods that helped our country's economy, but with this many hazardous byproducts were also made, and then disposed of in ways that polluted the land, water, and air of the earth. Waters became so polluted, that you could no longer tell if water was flowing, or if it was just another public restroom. One river, Cuyahoga, caught on fire because the chemicals polluting it ignited. It was disgusting-and then things got worse. I think that this is a terrible thing. The fact that people thought they could dump their waste and byproducts into a river, and not have any negative consequences, is just bad. People complain about global warming, and unclean waters, but really this is all product of their own wants and needs. Consumers buy things to make life easier and products that do more harm than good. A large part of our pollution problem is due to consumerism. As our numbers increase in spending and in population, he amount of hazardous waste has increased from 1 million ton in the 1940s, to 250 million tons annually in 1980s. Wow that's a huge jump in only 4 decades. With this upward trend, we should realize that it needs to stop. We need to do something so that we start producing significantly less hazardous waste.
Pollution not only affects our rivers, but it also affects the air. The quality of the air we breathe is getting lower and lower. The smog in the air is sometimes considered so dangerous in San Fransisco, that it is warned not to exercise outside for fear of getting toxins too deep within lungs. This is clearly not good. Not only are we becoming a fat country, the pollution we put out is another excuse not to exercise. We are at the point where pollution is not only affecting our environment and other animals, but it is now affecting us and poisoning us. There must be a stop to this pollution.
"pollution." American History. ABC-CLIO, 2010. Web. 31 Jan. 2010. .
When you said "not only are we becoming a fat country..." and "consumers buy things to make life easier..." I notice how those two characteristics of our country and our world impact the other and cause environmental destruction.
ReplyDeleteAs "lazy" people, we don't want to cook food, we don't want to wash dishes, and we usually don't even want to leave our house. What does this cause? It causes a polluted Earth. Becuase we don't want to cook, we go out (use cars) to buy food, and if we don't want to even leave our houses... there's take out food! What does that amount to?... TONS of paper and plastic containers that most of us lazy Americans don't even sort out to recycle. Too lazy to clean dishes? Paper and plastics are there to help you out... Is our laziness worth it?
Obviously there needs to be a stop to all the waste and pollution, but how do we do it? If there are already habbits in our culture, isn't it too late?