Part 5 of 5: Trashing America—Our poisoned waters

By Frosty Wooldridge

Part 5: Ocean poisoning and acidification

As we conclude this series concerning the trashing of America, you have discovered that we Americans trash our continent in endless methods.  We toss trash.  We bury trash. We inject chemicals in the land, air and water. We possess little regard for our environment whether we can see what we are doing via litter or not see it via chemicals, carbon footprint and ground water contamination.

One reader showed me his solution by telling me to “back up” my “Keep the Scene Clean” signs along I-70 on Exit 254 west of Denver, Colorado.  He said, “That sign won’t do any good and you know that.  Anything that is not BACKED up is the lazy man’s way.  Just like people that throw the trash out of their car. You have to back it up Frosty. Here’s how.  Put on the sign “Keep The Scene Clean” and BACK IT UP with:  “Snipers Are Observing at a Distance, Throw Trash at Your Own Risk!”   Thanks Nelson!

We trash our environment without any concern for the short or long term consequences. 

Most of us, and I repeat, most Americans lack enough sense of responsibility to pick it up.  They don’t care enough to organize groups to counter the Peter Coors Factor by creating a national 10 cent deposit-return recycling law.   We continue as just plain lazy on all our parts for something so basic and so sensible as deposit-return laws.  It’s morally and ethically irresponsible on multiple levels.

When it comes to our tossing “chemicals” and “toxins” into the environment, we stand guilty on all counts.   It’s amazing to me that we wonder why cancer accelerates as the number one killer of Americans.  It’s amazing to me that conditions such as autism and Parkinson’s disease grow in numbers, but we still spray billions of gallons of poisons on our crops with pesticides and herbicides that disrupt the neural networks that operate in all our bodies.  Twenty years ago autism struck 1 child in 20,000 births, but today, it strikes 1 in 110 births. Wouldn’t a bit of common sense tell us that we’re poisoning our world beyond our understandings?  (Source: Katie Couric, NBC, 2010, “Autism in America”)

For those of us lucky enough not to suffer cancer, it means chemical companies expect those that contract cancer as the unlucky ones known as chemical “collateral damage.”

From 1946 to 1970, the United States government run by our elected representatives dumped 100,000 curies of nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean about 20 miles off San Francisco in some 48,000 fifty-five gallon drums.  National Public Radio followed a report whereby scuba divers found that all the drums had leaked as expected and spilled their toxic load into the ocean.  They could have poured it out in the first place instead of pretending they were storing it in metal drums.  (www.Jstor.org)

No wonder pregnant women cannot eat tuna or salmon for fear their babies will suffer birth defects.  Guess what!  Children suffer all sorts of birth defects these days that were never heard about before 1950 when food was grown without chemicals.

With the recent nuclear waste being pumped into the Pacific from the Japanese reactors being hit by the tsunami, we can expect even more contamination of the oceans and marine life.  We’re “trashing” our oceans and much of our food.

Additionally, after WWII, U.S. officials “okayed” the dumping of millions of gallons of mustard gas and Lewisite chemicals into the Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.  You can Google it and see the dumping sites.  It’s pretty disgusting.  (Source: www.dailypress.org, “A generation of indiscriminate dumping”)

This is just a sampling of the millions of gallons of poisons dumped into the “final toilet” of our oceans.

“On April 19, 1958, the S.S. William Ralston was packed with 301,000 155-pound bombs filled with mustard agent, as well as almost 1,500 1-ton containers of Lewisite. The ship was taken an estimated 117 miles off San Francisco and scuttled in 13,542 feet of water. The dump zone had been used since the 1940s for surplus conventional high explosive ordnance, as well as an estimated 47,800 containers of low-level radioactive waste not known to be of military origin.  A month later, chemical munitions that couldn’t fit in the Ralston were loaded onto a barge and towed by the tug Sea Lion to the same location, where it was thrown over the side. Buried there were six 100-pound mustard bombs, 335 1-ton containers of Lewisite, 11 1-ton containers of mustard agent and a pair of mustard-filled projectiles of unknown caliber.”

Take a guess at what countries like Russia, China, India, Pakistan, France (with countless nuclear reactors) and all the other countries are doing with their nuclear waste.  I’m amazed we all haven’t come down with horrific cancers and birth defects.

Solutions:

How can Americans stop the container litter that stretches from sea to shining sea?  How can we stop adding to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?  How can we stop people from littering 51 billion pieces a year in the USA alone?

1.      We must ask ourselves if we as a civilization want to continue our extremely irresponsible activities as to litter, trash, fast food trash,  plastic cup trash, container trash, junk trailers, chemicals everywhere, poisoning our ground water, acidifying our oceans and leaving all forms of junk all over the landscape.

2.      We desperately need education in our schools that teach young Americans and immigrants from other third world cultures, now at over 40 million foreign born, that throwing trash as a matter of standard operating procedures—is not acceptable.

3.      We must realize that we are about to add 100, 200, 300 million more people to this country within the lifetime of a child born today.  The challenges of their “litter” in its many forms grows daunting beyond imagination.

4.      We must work at the local, state and national level to force a federal 10 cent deposit/return law for all 50 states. Michigan has led the way and it works brilliantly.

5.      We need intensive environmental educational classes as a pre-requisite to high school graduation.  We could supplement with video ads run on TV.

6.      You must get involved.  I hear complaints, “Well, they won’t do anything.”  That means “you” become “they” and then “you” get things moving.  We cannot count on lawmakers to do what’s right because of the Peter Coors Factor.

7.      Someone with money needs to start a national website that will promote a national 10 cent deposit-return law for all Americans. If I owned Bill Gates’ bank account, I’d create a national campaign to make it happen.  It’s just common sense for heaven sakes!

8.      That would get the ball rolling and move our civilization toward a cleaner, brighter and more ecologically responsible future.

9.      Additionally, it would “Keep the Scene Clean” like my signs on I-70 on exit 254 in Colorado.

10.  With over 80,000 chemicals created by humanity, we need to stop creating an average of 2,000 more chemicals annually that cannot be good for nature.  When is enough—enough?  I say we are there now!  Let’s quit destroying the ecological balances of our world by adding more chemicals.

If we don’t address the core of the container litter problem, we will never solve it by picking up the endless trash.  Why? Because millions of people will keep tossing their containers!  We need economic incentives so that more people will pick up the trash thrown by millions of slobs, misfits, stupid people, morons, idiots and morally mindless people.  A 10 cent deposit incentive would create an armada of kids will be out picking up that litter faster than a chicken on a bug.  Otherwise, we will continue to do damage to the biosphere as to litter, resource waste and environmental degradation on multiple levels.

“Keep The Scene Clean: Snipers Are Observing at a Distance, Throw Trash at Your Own Risk!”   

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Florida