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Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
I'm not so sure about that, cleaner is relative right? There are many indications that cleaner waterways have huge algea blooms that have killed off wildlife just as pollution had. The Chesepeake watershed is an example of this isn't it? The crabbing industry doesn't think so from what I read a couple weeks ago in the NY Times. Stocks have declined steadily since the 70's. Culprit is algae blooms living off the run off from the over developed areas.
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Huh? This makes no sense to me. Yes, we're having a different environmental impact on these areas than we were (I think the algae blooms you're talking about are related to fertilizer and agricultural run-off - I just don't have time to check ATM). This is worse than other toxic chemical pollution how, exactly?
Every living thing (and lots of non-living processes) have an impact on our environment, and are in turn effected by the environment. People aren't an exception, we're just an extreme case in that we (especially in the last 200 years) have more of a capacity to affect change in our environment, while at the same time have the ability to adapt to a wider range of envoronmental conditions. What other species, even before industrialization, existed everywhere from alaska to the sahara desert?
With the ability we have to change the environment, either deliberately, or as a by-product of our other activities, we have to be careful, or we'll end up changing the environment in ways we don't like. We may not like them for purely asthetic reasons (Most people would prefer parts of the coast of alaska before thousands of gallons of oil got spilled on them, even if it doesn't affect them directly), or for reasons of pure self-interest - life is likely to get pretty uncomfortable for everyone if the free mercury in the environment gets much higher, or a few billion people are displaced by rising sea levels. Even if you don't live near the coast, where do you think the people who *do* live near the coast now are going to want to live if the sea level rises 15 feet in the next 50 years?
No reasonable scientists are projecting the death of the human race (outside of a global nuclear war). What they *are* telling us is that our activities are changing the environment in drastic and sudden ways. No one can predict exactly what will happen with any degree of certainty, but what they *are* telling us is that if our carbon dioxide output continues to rise at the rate it is predicted to, the best models they have predict a precipitous rise in global temperature, and the resulting rise in ocean levels. The could be wrong. The earth is a very, very complicated place, and impossible to model acurately. But this is their best informed scientific opinion. They aren't predicting the end of the human race. They are predicting these changes, and we can easily imagine some of the impacts on our own lives if they come about.
That said, the problem I have with the focus on CO2 is that people seem to be ignoring the *other* environmental impacts we have. Toxic chemicals, including mercury, continue to be a big problem, and have a negative impact both on the qualitative state of the earth (most people would prefer fish and crabs in those rivers you mention to algae - fish, crabs, and algae are all life living in the environment in question - we just like the fish and crabs better than the green stuff), and our own quality of life. How many people, living at a certain quality of life, with a certain lifestyle, with a certain environmental 'efficiency', can the earth support, without lowering the quality of life for everyone?
If everyone lived the American lifestyle, at our current level of wastefulness, we'd be in Big Trouble. And there are a billion Chinese and a billion Indians all wanting the American quality of life. With another billion Africans not far behind. If they all suddenly started living like Americans (and most Europeans), what do you think would happen? How long would our oil and coal last? What would be the impact of all those happy meal containers being piled up, or buried, or burned, or tossed in the ocean? I'd be willing to bet anything that the lifestyle of the average industrialized-country citizen is just not sustainable for a population of 6 billion. We aren't going to keep everyone else at their current level, and the population is going up, not down. So we *have* to lead the world in finding a better way, because we led the way here, and because it's simply in our own self interest not to use up the plant we're sitting on.