Pollution Threatens the Future
In the Parade Magazine, January 23, 1994
written by Colin Greer, he was and is President of the New World Foundation.
The following article was shared on global toxins. It is interesting to see how we are growing consciously aware of being GREEN and NATURAL and CARING FOR OUR PLANET since this was written 16 years ago.
"The World Is At Stake"
"It will not be enough rely on experts. Ordinary citizens must become experts too. It will take public opinion on a wide scale to ensure that world leaders act."
I would like to share a few excerpts from this article focusing on the United States and Russia. It stated:
The toxic aftermath of the Cold War produced by its military priorities involves great dangers to us, form ozone safety to water safety.
The rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado, where by products of chemical weapons production have polluted the groundwater and soil. The Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver has stored 125 types of toxic waste. Nerve gas and pesticides were also processed there. The site has been called "the most polluted square mile on earth." In Dover, NJ the ground water in one location has over 5000 times the permitted level of trichlorethylene.
Russia holds first place as culprits in this. Several regions in both countries are second to none in the dangers they present from this kind of waster. What makes it even more alarming is that both countries have kept this all very secret. Citizens of these countries don't know enough to call for change.
In Russia, since 1952, near Lake Karichai in the Urals, liquid wastes were stored, eventually spilled and traces of the wastes are found in the Arctic Ocean, thousands of miles away. By 1988, thermal energy produced by wastes resulted in the evaporation of an entire lake; 120 million curies of radioactive waste, 1 1/2 times that released in the Chernobyl accident, were released. Now the lake has been covered with a thick layer of concrete.
We need change our values. We have to educate people. We have to teach citizens and governments to be aware of the dangers to our children's future. I have looked at the geography of the post - Cold War toxic sites. The challenge is enormous. Educational systems all over the world must take up this task, international codes of law must be developed and the practical work of environmental cleanup must be undertaken. We need to deal with the challenge of huge existing nuclear and chemical arsenals and the even bigger challenge of the conflict with nature that is fundamental to our weapons and chemical technologies. Political , military and business leaders and ordinary citizens must face the problem. We must all be involved. It won't work to ignore those making the political decision s or those make th e profits - or the poor, who are most likely to live closest to the greatest toxic exposure.
American must be an example to the world. America should do what we have done-that is, to abandon any attempt to impose a certain model on other peoples. If we just say, "Xerox the American way and standard of living," then we must answer the question, "What do we do about the fact that 260 million people in America use 40 percent of the world's energy resources, and the 5 billion people in the rest of the world use what's left?"
Our goal is to reach out to citizens all over the world to reform the toxic economy.
TODAY
How have things changed in the last 16 years.
Hazardous Materials and Waste Management
Division
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CHINA DUMPS TOXIC WASTE INTO RIVERS
Over 100,000 tons of toxic waste dumped by companies in China flowing down rivers into Russia per PRAVDA/
http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/disasters/28-02-2006/76614-chinese_pollution-0
Moscow - — The residents of Chapaevsk, a city in Central Russia, say the lakes near local chemical factories are dead from toxic waste, no longer freeze and contaminate the town's water supply.
In the western Russian city of Dzerdjinsk, the mortality rate of children and adolescents is 50 percent higher than the national average because of pollution from chemical plants. The city is one of the world's 10 most-polluted places, according to the Blacksmith Institute, a consulting firm in New York.
Colin Greer is still Presiden of the New World Foundation and they are one of many organizations seeking to educate humanity on cleaning our environment.
