Re: risk and Safe Drinking Water Act

["Mark Robinowitz" <mrobinowitz@igc.apc.org>]

> Date:          Sun, 5 May 1996 14:57:36 -0400 (EDT)
> Reply-to:      kegill@halcyon.com
> From:          kegill@halcyon.com (Kathy E. Gill)
> To:            Multiple recipients of list <dioxin-l@essential.org>
> Subject:       Re: risk and Safe Drinking Water Act

> On Date:          Fri, 3 May 1996 12:49:34 +0000
>  "Mark Robinowitz" <mrobinowitz@igc.apc.org> wrote:
> 
> >go spend a few days in a virgin old growth forest ecosystem, it would
> >further your education much more than sitting in your office monitoring
> >the thoughts of environmentalists trying to protect life from unwanted
> >toxic byproducts from making plastic lawn furniture and disposable food
> >wrap and other wonderful technologies that aren't needed and won't be
> >missed when they're banned.
> 
> Hi, Mark, since I live in the Seattle area -- I have visited not only old
> growth forests but second- and third-growth. We seem to have different
> concepts of what "the problem" is -- I am far more concerned with
> *population* growth than lawn furniture and disposable food wrap ....
> 

ah, but how many Ethiopians are driving around polluting the atmosphere, 
using CFCs, throw away PVC plastic packaging stuff, deforestation for junk 
mail, etc.  One third of the world's energy consumption is from the six 
percent of humanity here in the US.

And according to NASA, the Brazilian Amazon is still far more intact and 
forested than the great temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest, 
which is evaporating like spring time snow, an ecosystem with more biomass
per acre than any other on Earth.  Some of those ancient trees will be
shredded, boiled, pulped, and then bleached with chlorine to poison the
waterways with countless organic chlorine compounds that didn't exist
before this technology was invented.

but hey it's always fun to blame someone ELSE for these problems
We North Americans can consume as much crap as we want but as long as
we don't have four kids (like Al Gore) we aren't responsible ...

Population times consumption is the problem, it's not either/or.
If Americans reduced their consumption, they'd pollute less and set a 
better example for other societies.  And who gave us the right to eat the 
planet for our disposable convenience and beam stupid Hollywood images
of excessive gluttony and waste at Third World audiences who can barely
afford simple necessities of existence.  We have six billion people
on Earth, and we're already beyond any limit of "sustainability," but
surely you must realize that if we learn to stop using consumption as
a substitute for satisfaction in life we can easily reduce much of our
impacts on the planet w/o shivering in the dark (although some institutions
are so dedicated to short term profits that they don't care about
the long term implications of our decisions).f


> And, like Ayn Rand, I don't like other presuming to know what is best for
> me or what I will or will not miss if it were banned. I don't like demigods
> of any stripe. Religious Right, Extreme Environmentalists, Anti-Choice
> Protestors Who Kill Doctors ... same mold, same thinking -- THEY know
> what's right for me. Nada.
> 
> Kathy
> 
> 

2,3,7,8-tcdd doesn't particularly care about your or my philosophy 

these molecules interact with biological organisms regardless what any
industry propagandist, legislator, lawyer or ecologist has to say


Extreme environmentalism is the idea that we can create toxic poisons, 
destroy habitat and pollute the atmosphere and yet remane immune from the 
consequences.  Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was denounced in 1962, but 
she grossly understated the problem (she didn't know about die-oxins).  
People protesting the construction of Three Mile Island were ignored.  
Scientists warning six years ago about mad cow disease in Britain were 
laughed at by the UK government.  The Dalkon Shield was pronounced
safe and wholesome by the FDA.  The list seems endless.

It's extreme to think that we can indefinitely synthesize organic chlorine
compounds without public health consequences, and that citizens should
not democratically determine technological choices that affect life
everywhere.