Harvy Blatt is a retired scientist, who taught geology in American Universities for decades. His environmental interests and particularly his concerns about American's health - both the economic and human health - made him write this book to help the American citizens understand the causes and possible solutions to the nation's environmental ills.
T he book is straightforward and easy to read and therefore suitable for the general reader. It presents the environmental challenges we are faced with and outlines workable and reasonable ways for individuals, industry and government to tackle those problems.
The American public is increasingly concerned about environmental deterioration to the extent that a 2002 poll indicated that 63% would be willing to roll back tax cuts in order to preserve the environment.
Public concerns are not always the same as scientific concerns; the book considers both the scientific concerns as well as the more personal evaluations of the general public. Topics include water pollution and water supply, flood dangers; energy supplies; global warming; air pollution; ozone and nuclear energy.
Chapter I deals with water and water related problem.
The Colorado River, of the most heavily plumbed rivers in the world, is taken as an example how bad things can became when there is no limit of consumption and no clear agreements among states of how much water is allocated to each one.
The author gives examples of ways to make cuts on water use; being one of the major users of water in the US , the agricultural sector could apply modern irrigation methods to save water. Industry is another major user of water and as it does not actually consume the water it is logic to recycle the water within the factories. Then there is the home use of water: a lot can be done through rather simple and cheap measures: low-flow toilets, toilet leak repairs, change bathrooms habits, efficient washing and dishwashing machines just to mention a few. This alone can save tremendous amounts of water when multiplied by 295 million people doing so. The author quotes : "taking anything for granted is in a real sense to neglect it and that is how most of us treat water".
The major water polluter is the American Military with the chemical industry second on the list.
Political interests many times block solutions: in the case of the military national security always prevails over public concerns about the environment. Progress has been made already over the years mainly through federal legislation but much more needs to be done at considerable cost .
Chapter II deals with floods.
Floods have killed more people than any other natural disaster is therefore a statement which couldn't be more true after the recent Asian tsunami which killed so many people.
(The author does not mention tsunamis in this book)
Blatt explains the causes of floods that originate on land and the ways damage might be reduced such as less urbanization to keep more undeveloped land to serve as a barrier to flooding ; no building in flood-prone areas; construction of artificial levees along rivers high enough to contain floodwater.
Hurricanes are causing floods that originate at sea, Florida being the state where hurricanes are most frequent.
Global warming may increase the frequency of floods and hurricanes but is not yet scientifically proven.
The tremendous challenges of the ever-increasing mountain of solid waste is the next subject :the US is producing about twice the amount per capita compared to other industrialized countries: staggering is the number of 315 million computers alone that ended up in landfills in 2004 in the US. Not only do they take up a lot of space but the leakage of lead threatens to pollute the groundwater.
Three ways of disposing of solid waste are discussed: landfills, incineration and recycling.
The use of landfills is compared to incinerators and gives a realistic picture of the challenges we face. Interstate traffic in garbage is a booming business as some states have no more active landfills left and pay other states that accept the waste.
A successful method to reduce the amount of garbage proved to be charging the homeowners per bag instead of flat monthly fees; household solid waste has been reduced by 25 to 40% in those municipalities.
Many products claim to be biodegradable but in order to be degraded the product has to be exposed to sunlight, rain and oxygen; as most waste ends up in landfills decomposition is very slow because air and rainwater are kept out.
Some items are nearly indestructible such as car tires and are therefore restricted in landfills; alternatives are to use them for commercial purposes and to burn them as fuel for power plants and cement kilns.
The benefits of recycling are obvious; negative points are the high costs and the fact that it does not change the American culture of consumerism but rather soothes the conscience and it is an easy way for governments to score green points with their constituents!
Of the three "R's": reduce, reuse , recycle: only recycle has a realistic chance of succeeding in the affluent American society.
The chapter on soil, crops and food points out that one day the American agricultural abundance may not be sufficient any more because we are neglecting the soil. Water shortages and urban development are problems the farmlands are faced with. Less farmers are attracted to the profession because of economic hardship and increased opportunities in other fields. As a result the amount of land being farmed has decreased since 1950 Soil erosion is a hotly debated issue and methods are cited which may reduce the erosion of soil. Pesticides have become 10 to 100 times more toxic than they were 30 years ago and many chemicals have not been tested on humans to determine long-term effects. Climate change will on one hand be beneficial for agriculture but on the other hand is negative in the sense that some weeds, insects and fungal diseases will increase which asks for more insecticides.
Organic farming is on the rise because of an increasing public concern about pesticides in food. Governments worldwide are promoting organic farming and hopefully in the future organic food products will become cheaper as the produce infrastructure grows.|
The controversy regarding genetically modified food remains although two-thirds of the food in the supermarkets already contains such ingredients. But GMF is here and will likely be more accepted as the years pass. So far no convincing evidence exists to prove that GMF poses a risk to human health.
American agriculture is going through fundamental changes which cannot be stopped but which should be carefully monitored and controlled.
All the different methods of generating energy are discussed with all their advantages and disadvantages. It becomes clear that we need to change the way in which we generate energy because oil and coal are a clear and present danger to our health and to the environment.
Those changes will not take place overnight as we still depend too much on the conventional energy sources that have been benefiting from many federal subsidies over the years. Research is needed to lower the cost of renewable sources of energy (biomass, hydropower, geothermal power, solar power and wind power). Most research groups agree that we will see a rapid increase of the use of renewable energy sources during the next few decades but to what degree is not yet clear.
The main problem is that the political process produces laws and not long-range policies; once a law is passed it is difficult to modify it until its long-term harmful consequences reach crisis proportions. However needed changes in our use of energy are expensive.
Global warming is a fact: human activities contributed to an enhanced greenhouse effect, mainly because of combustion of oil and coal.
The number of cars in the US contributes greatly to the emission of carbon dioxides and soot. Soot alone may be responsible for 15-30% of global warming and thus is second only to carbon dioxide as a cause of enhanced global warming. Amazingly Americans are increasingly buying SUV's, minivans and light trucks in spite of their cost, consumption of gasoline and bad effects on global warming. Americans tend to see their car as extensions of themselves!
Coal and oil have been the foundation of our industrial civilization for 150 years and changes cannot be done overnight .Alternative energy sources are being studied and tried; natural gas is increasingly used in power plants rather than the more polluting coal.
Hybrid and battery-powered vehicles are introduced; fuel cells, in which the hydrogen-oxygen reaction takes place, are the most promising power sources of the future but they are still expensive.
The sea level is very likely to rise due to increased temperatures regardless of the cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. This may endanger people who live in coastal cities. Global warming also increases ozone destruction.
The Kyoto Treaty, which is to take effect this year, obliges industrialized signatory nations to cut emissions of carbon dioxide by 5.2% of their 1990 levels by 2012. Already 126 countries have signed so far but the US is still to ratify it fearing it will be disastrous for their economies.
Anyhow the emission cuts agreed to are very small compared to what is needed: the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change estimated in 2003 that at present emissions rates, emissions of greenhouse gases in 2010 will be 17% above 1990 levels.
Cutting greenhouse gases needs worldwide cooperation and far more drastic cuts than the ones agreed upon so far, are needed.
The bad effects of air pollution on respiratory diseases, cancers and heart problems are generally known; air pollution has harmed crop production and caused more deaths than traffic accidents in the US.
The problem is worldwide and, like in the US, many mega cities have too high levels of noxious gasses in the air and therefore do not meet the Environment Protection Agency standards.
Fortunately the passing of the 1970 Clean Air Act has clearly improved the air quality.
Many measures have been taken ever since to curb pollutants from the air the major improvement being the banning of lead from gasoline; other measures include installing catalytic converters in cars, strict emission controls on industries and the WHO's tobacco treaty. (this treaty is not yet signed by the US).
Airplanes are till now exempted from most pollution rules.
In the chapter on ozone the author explains the importance of ozone, what caused its destruction, to what extent damage is done and what did we do to reverse the process.
CFK's have been banned in most industrialized countries since 1996 by means of the Montreal Protocol. Most countries agreed easily on limiting the production of CFK's because only producers of a single group of products were effected and the result will be near total elimination of the ozone-destroying chemicals. On top of that it gives good public relations at a very low cost. The number of people with skin cancer is on the rise due to the destruction of ozone molecules in the atmosphere.
The good news is that the thinning of the ozone layer has reached it peak thanks to all the measures taken to eliminate the production of ozone-eating chemicals but it will take at least another 50 years or so to fully recover.
The concern of nuclear power is mainly the escape of radiation from the nuclear fuel and its effect on human health and the fact that it is impossible to eliminate human error.
The Chernobyl disaster did not only contaminate Ukraine; radioactive dust reached the entire Northern Hemisphere. Cancer rates went up in countries affected; birth defects and inherited genetic damage increased but the full effects will not be known for many years.
The problem is that many nuclear power plants reach the end of their operating span soon or are already old and outdated; dismantling them is a huge problem: no retired reactor has been dismantled yet and nobody knows whether it is technically feasible given the level of radioactivity that must be dealt with. It is estimated that at least $500 million is needed for each reactor to be dismantled (there are 103 operating reactors in the US); cleaning up military nuclear-weapons complexes may be as much as ten times more expensive. No politician has dared to tackle the problem; just the cost of insuring the companies and employees that will have to do the job is immense and beyond imagination.
Concluding the author writes that most Americans agree on doing something to restore the environment; however they all share a common belief that environmental regulations will cause wide-spread unemployment and will result in companies building new plants overseas to escape the strict rules.
After analyzing the economic and unemployment data from the past 30 years, those beliefs turn out to be false.
What is needed of the American public is concern, knowledge, involvement and public pressure: Citizens should let congressional representatives know their views, they not only need the money from the fossil-fuel lobby but also votes to be reelected.
Many things can be done at a personal level from wasting less water, driving smaller cars (not likely in the US), checking flood-hazard maps within the community, being aware of what is being done with the garbage, separating when possible, forming committees, doing research, considering an organic garden or buying organic products, forming an opinion on genetically modified food, being aware of exposure to the sun in summer, checking about regular inspections of nuclear power plants, pressing for controls on water and air pollution, supporting taxing environmentally destructive activities (already widely levied all over Europe with revenues being recycled back to subsidize green investments )and so on.
Margaret Mead, the famous anthropologist once wrote: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has"
All our environmental problems are political and social, not scientific problems. We have to overcome our reluctance and insist that lawmakers pass and enforce strict antipollution regulations; we have to change public apathy in regard to things as the reduction of water usage, recycling of waste, buying smaller cars and switching to alternative sources of energy.
We have caused the environmental problems but we can solve them if we change our lifestyles. They will greatly increase the quality of life for all of us.
America's environmental report card:
Are we making the grade?
By: Harvey Blatt
The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2005