April 22, 2003
On the first Earth Day 33 years ago, when I lived in a rural area where we got our water from wells and most of our neighbors were farmers, one of my (non-farmer) neighbors and I packed up our total of five kids and went out at 5:30 a.m. to post signs at all the local supermarkets about the dangers of phosphates to our water quality. A small act, granted, but it got me an interview on a local radio station about that issue and it was something I could actually get done and feel good about.
This from Earth Day 2003 – A Time for Mourning, Not Craft Fairs by Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D via Natalie Davis on Blog Sisters.
On Earth Day this year, while speeches, conversations and trinket sales take place:
603 people worldwide will die from exposure to pesticides and countless more will suffer serious health threats from chronic exposure.
5,400 to 11,000 children will die from diarrhea from polluted drinking water.
27,000 children will die from curable infectious diseases.
164 babies will be born that are effected by mercury poisoning because their mothers ate contaminated fish, while government agencies recommend that pregnant women eat several servings of fish each week.
Over 103,000 animals will be killed for fur coats.
Nearly 2 million gallons of engine oil will be poured down the drain and will enter our nation’s waterways.
Over 41 million pounds of trash will be dumped at sea worldwide. About 77 percent of all ship waste comes from cruise ships.
Over 3 million pounds of hydrocarbons will be released into the atmosphere just from jet skis, lawn mowers, boat engines, and other 2-cycle motors.
At least 1,200 gallons of oil and fuel will leak from aging and malfunctioning pipelines in the US, polluting groundwater, lakes, rivers, oceans and soil.
313 million gallons of fuel - enough to drain 26 tractor-trailer trucks every minute – will be used in the US
18 million tons of raw materials will be taken from US soil.
Miscarriages will continue to take place among women of the Shoalwater Bay Tribe in Washington State, possibly from pesticide contamination in cranberry bogs. Earth Day has become a time when the right wing corporate, industrial, and political leaders probably rejoice in the passivity of the population. Of course, there are exceptions and a number of groups throughout the nation will be mindful of the significance of the day
Also on Blog Sisters, Alaskan resident Klondike Kate states the following as she points out how the Bush administration is moving toward further environmental destruction:
...As thirsty America sucks down 20 million barrels a day, even if we could use all that was drilled in the Arctic Refuge, it would be less than six months' worth, although oil industry puts that estimate much longer, of course, used in combination with imports--to several years' worth. But by that time, the flora and fauna would have suffered irreversible, irreparable damage. And there is more oil than that off the Florida coast. (Oh wait. That's where the "other" Bush lives. Never mind. He probably wouldn't want to look out his window at oil derricks.)
It's not just that the caribou herds will suffer and may be deccimated entirely, and that several Native tribes have lived on those herds for thousands of years, no; there is a world teeming with life in the aptly named Wildlife Refuge (see the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for descriptions and pictures) of: rare plants, slow-growing tundra, 160 species of birds, Arctic wolves, Arctic fox, grizzlies and polar bears, even a survivor from the last Ice Age, though endangered now--the shaggy musk ox, distant cousin to the wooley mammoth, Wooley Booley.
So....if you're the President and you want all those kickbacks promised to you by the oil industry, and everybody keeps telling you no....how do you get to those dollar bills?
You start a war, silly.
And you continue destroying people, cultures, and the land that sustains them.
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Old Comments (3)
Kate S. on 22 Apr 2003
With a heavy heart I read the roll call of poisons, perpetrators and politics surrounding the need for Earth Day, just to remind myself.
But today what stands out in my mind most of all, are the birth defects from mercury and the miscarriages by women who live near the contaminated cranberry bogs.
It seems to me this is THE convoluted hallmark we have been waiting for since the '60's to appear that tells us, we have gone too far and are now poisoning our own. The balance has tipped, not in our favor. We have finally reached a point where we are our own undoing, and by killing off our chances for the human race to thrive, we will end up like the asteroid that was the dinosaur's demise.
This is the stuff of which the doomsday 60's and 70's science fiction was made.
Elaine on 23 Apr 2003
I know that there always have been wars, pestilence, plagues, and natural disasters in our human history. But it just seems to me that the smarter we get as a species, the more damage we cause to the world around us. Yes, too soon old; too late smart. "Too late" is almost on us, it seems.
dzwonki polifoniczne on 13 Jun 2004
Hmmmmm interesting !!!