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Holladay15
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Holladay15
3,671 posts
Nomad

Do you think that the government is making to much big of deal to the environment?

  • 46 Replies
314d1
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314d1
3,817 posts
Nomad

In America, people try to help the environment. In Soviet Russia, environment help you... Just had this on my mind for a while, and this seemed to be a chance to use this as an opening statement that has no relevance to what I am about to say.

Or take pesticides like DDT, which poison entire ecosystems due to their sheer toxicity.


Irrelevant considering the effects that may be gained. For example, DDT is an extremely effective pesticide which can help many nations with malaria problems. Would you be against that?

Radon is naturally occurring for starters. Second, it plays a HUGE role in the environment. If a nuclear powerplant has an accident, an area is contaminated with highly carcinogenic, mutagenic radiation for several thousand years.


If we have an accident, which rarely happens, and if we take Japan's recent accidents into account when working with our nuclear defenses, accidents will be even more rare in the future.
Joe96
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Joe96
2,226 posts
Peasant

It's not wrong to pollute because of the environment itself, the reason it's bad is because of all the things living in the environment and how the pollution affects them.

ilovemoney249
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ilovemoney249
811 posts
Nomad

The government should just stop companies that help hurt the environment, but that's hard because there are greedy *******s out there who think of nothing but themselves, when in fact in a couple of years there will be nothing left to cut or drill or whatever and they just get to walk off with money in their pockets while leaving a path of destruction in their wake.

314d1
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314d1
3,817 posts
Nomad

Oh it works in the short term, however, 5 years down the road, those same people will start dropping dead and suffering birth defects due to latent toxicity of DDT.


What will happen? Our eggshells will start thinning? The effect on mammals is minimal, let alone one as large as us.

Malaria remains a major public health challenge in many countries. 2008 WHO estimates were 243 million cases, and 863,000 deaths. About 89% of these deaths occur in Africa, and mostly to children under the age of 5.[82] DDT is one of many tools that public health officials use to fight the disease. Its use in this context has been called everything from a "miracle weapon [that is] like Kryptonite to the mosquitoes,"[83] to "toxic colonialism."[84]

And besides that, it seems the eggshells in the arias studied are still thin, which seems to suggest that it was just a correlation, not causation.
zakyman
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zakyman
1,627 posts
Peasant

Doesn't matter. 2012 is fast approaching. Hold on to your heads everyone!






(just kidding)

314d1
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314d1
3,817 posts
Nomad

Well for starters, it's a mutagen and carcinogenic.
Next, you poison your food supply and disrupt the predator/prey interaction as well as kill off the scavengers.


I realize this, but the effects of malaria are more wide spread and deadly. DDT was used on crops with no apocalyptic effects, the effects to nearly eliminating malaria would save more than it damages. And who cares about the predator/prey interaction when human lives are involved? Human lives far out way any negative effects that could occur, and would be better than just draining the ****ed thing.

Also, Mosquitoes have started to gain resistance to DDT, india is a prime example, DDT is pretty much ineffective there due to the resistance of mosquitoes.


Maybe in some nations, yes. But even then, DDT still is an effective repellent to mosquitoes, even those who are immune to it still avoid it. It is still one of the best pesticides in the world.
ultima39
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ultima39
15 posts
Nomad

Yes, but we shouldn't just let earth go to pot.

314d1
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314d1
3,817 posts
Nomad

I refer to long term. You screw with the ecosystem, you will get problems. Bird population dies off, the rat population, no longer preyed on by birds, explodes, carrying rodent born diseases.


The spray, if you are correct, would also effect the rodent's, to a lesser extent. Even then, we will kill the rats. Easy fix. Though I don't know the ecosystems of places like South Africa very well, I would easily say that the "short term" effects are worth it.
314d1
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314d1
3,817 posts
Nomad

You do know places like india have been trying to deal with the rat problem for several thousand years without success right?


Same can be said about the mosquito problem. May I ask how many people are dying of rat based diseases in modern times? I can't seem to find a source for rate base disease death tolls.
314d1
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314d1
3,817 posts
Nomad

Diseases transmitted by rats

You see, when rodents eat, they also defaecate at the same time, contaminating food. There is a reason why rats are hated in the food industry.


I know this. I live in the garage, have owned rabbits, and spoken about the diseases before. What I don't know is the death tole, which your link doesn't state.

And in the third world, Diseases such as diarrhea is fatal to children. In 2009, Diarrhea killed over 1.5 million kids under age 5


I realize this. But none of the diseases on your list have diarrhea as a symptom, according to a quick skim, and diarrhea is caused by many diseases not carried by rats. While malaria, which is totally held by mosquitoes from my knowledge, while malaria "Each year, there are more than 225 million cases of malaria,[8] killing around 781,000 people each year according to the World Health Organisation's 2010 World Malaria Report", totally caused my mosquitoes and nothing else.
Moegreche
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Moegreche
3,826 posts
Duke

I'm just wondering what you guys think is the ethical principle behind protecting the environment. I think we're all agreed that it's important, I'm just wondering why.

Is it:
1) Protecting the earth in inherently good. Perhaps because the earth itself has rights, or some other reason I can't think of.

or

2) Protecting the earth is good because it ultimately serves us. Whether is be politically, economically, or just our own survival - the benefit it ultimately ours to reap.

Kasic
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Kasic
5,552 posts
Jester

Is it:
1) Protecting the earth in inherently good. Perhaps because the earth itself has rights, or some other reason I can't think of.
or
2) Protecting the earth is good because it ultimately serves us. Whether is be politically, economically, or just our own survival - the benefit it ultimately ours to reap.


I'd have to say...a mixture, but a lot of 2. It is at the moment, the only place we can live. However, just because we live here does not give us the right to destroy it/corrupt it, we should treat our planet with dignity that befits such a rare occurance in the universe. Who knows, over time more intelligent life may evolve on our planet, why should we destroy that chance simply to optimize our current situation and neglect looking at future consequences.
Armed_Blade
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Armed_Blade
1,482 posts
Shepherd

I mean, if we end up burning a hole straight through the o zone layer were all going to die, but lets just cross that bridge when we come to it.

Minimum damage is caused by us, plant and underwater life beats us by about 1500% more.

Each.


Okay, This is two pages back.
But I just have to say this... Highfire [sorry if I'm misspelling here]
That's a load of bull.

1) The ozone layer is growing in size, has been since the Kyoto Protocol. Carbon Dioxide does absolutely nothing to the Ozone layer. Nothing. At. All.
The 1500% thing, could you quote it? I've never seen it. Also, Pollution by plants and animals is decomposable and usually has a neutral pH and a net charge of zero (excluding Ammonia by plants, but that isn't a problem -- they eat it back up again].
So you're not making any sense. It's better to leave the tree there.

As for the environment -- I think it's worth telling that 32% of our trash, the highest percent -- is recyclable paper.

^I'm not saying we de-industrialize or live like cavemen. Technology will fix us as we progress, but only if we treat technology with the care of someone that uses it. You wouldn't want to operate a coal mine without knowing how to maximize the amount of kilowatts retrievable from each kilogram of coal, right?

In the same way, I feel like we can count on human ingenuity to solve our pressing problems -- but only if we work to keep them going in the meantime.

Whether your reasons are for ethical or survival purposes -- they all lead to the same thing, the environment is important because it offers us services we cannot live without. I don't think 'leaving it alone' is the right thing to do. We're always progressing as a global society, we just can't do that. I feel that if we manage it better then we will be able to maximize what we get out of it while keeping it relatively sustainable.

And lastly, DDT fails. It's not the only thing that works. It's toxicity is nasty because it can bioaccumulate in anything. You will use it on a farm. Farm will grow good. It will end up in the water. Then the fishies. Biomagnification will occur [fish x will eat a million phytoplankton, therefore having a million pieces of DDT. then big fish y will eat that 10 fish x, having 10 million] This will go in a chain until you eat it. Then you get cancer and die.
barney003
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barney003
55 posts
Nomad

Thanks for these beautiful comment. This is not a single person's work to do. We all have to come up to protect our environment, otherwise as we are hearing a lot about global warming, this world will no longer last in a couple of years.

CrimsonVamp
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CrimsonVamp
93 posts
Peasant

If no one protected the environment, we would live in a junkyard right now.

Furthermore, we are part of the environment. The moment it dies, we die as well.

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