Page 8 - Sonoma County Gazette May 2020

OPINION: Is Green Winning?
By Linda Swartz
Vesta’s feature article “Steady Progress” made the point that we can only
gauge our environmental progress by looking at its evolution over many decades. She highlighted many of our long term successes including the elimination
of DDT, the cleaning up of the Cuyahoga and Hudson River Basins, and the adoption of crop rotation and soil conservation to replenish topsoil blown away during the Dust Bowl.
Hindsight allows us to see that good outcomes often grow out of disasters and human mistakes. She concluded that science proves over and over that life adapts, and that often our interventions only make situations worse where nature has the capacity to heal wounds inflicted by humanity. I applaud her deference to scientific observation.
I also think it’s important to consider which achievements have been sustained and which “victories” may need to be revisited to assess our progress. Vesta mentioned the rejuvenation of the forest contaminated during the great Chernobyl atomic disaster. A raging wildfire in the area has released up to sixteen times the normal radiation into the atmosphere. While this fire was likely deliberately set, the risk of fires like this are greatly increased as people are burning the grasses in surrounding fields.
Scientific research shows that rising temperatures are drying out foliage, and lack of forest management has built up fuel load and fire risk. Animals & plants still show signs of radiation poisoning, and irradiation of insects and decomposers keeps forests from decaying normally & building healthy soils.
In addition, cancers and genetic damage are still plaguing thousands of Chernobyl survivors and their descendants. So it may be many more decades before this event is behind us. Still, perhaps disasters such as Chernobyl, Fukushima and others raise our awareness of the dangers of nuclear power and may lead us to develop safer and cleaner energy alternatives. Devastating wildfires remind us of the importance of science based forestry practices.
The huge efforts individual citizens and groups have made to move us toward zero waste are indeed to be applauded. Yet we need to hold the petroleum and plastics industries accountable for their lack of honesty and transparency in their ad campaigns and recycling business practices.
A Frontline investigation reports that perhaps 10% of all the plastic we’ve sorted into bins and taken to recycle centers has ever been made into products. Most ends up in landfills and incinerators where its burning releases toxic fumes. News reports show the “Great Pacific Gyre” of plastic garbage, but few document the fields of plastic debris from China blown across the backyards and beaches of Indonesia whose people have no capacity to recycle it or dispose of it safely.
Research by the Smithsonian Institute shows that most plastics cannot be reclaimed due to additives mixed in with them to provide color, toughness, flexibility and pliability. Thus most of our plastic ware is “downcycled” into products of lower quality, if it gets reused at all. One type of polymer, a “PDK” does show promise for being “upcycled” into a higher quality product for making other consumer items, but this process requires the upgrading of recycling facilities, which has yet to be done on any large scale.
Our citizenry will need to pressure big businesses to bring these on line. Organizations such as Zero Waste encourage us to not only be better consumers, but to ask our elected representatives and our businesses to join us in the cause so that we can continue our upward progress toward a clean, healthy and sustainable world.
Dennis Hayes, the leading organizer of the first Earth Day back in 1970 says (in the April issue of the AARP bulletin) he remains hopeful that “Green is winning,”
Although worldwide climate disasters indicate rising levels of CO2, he believes the people’s growing vision of an ultra efficient society powered by one hundred percent renewables will manifest with international political will and cooperative action.
Many thanks to this paper and to Vesta, Tish Levee, and contributors who are helping to elevate our environmental awareness and publishing information that inspires us to keep moving toward the green, clean world we know is possible.
8 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 5/20