I am not an environmental freak but I am very concerned about the environment and may soon become one.
There are many topics to be discussed on the environment but I am going to stick to the pollution of our oceans.
Years ago, an atomic energy reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, melted down with serious damage to the land, air and waters. The U.S. and other countries around the world monitored this meltdown very rigorously and kept a very close eye on it. As of today, to memory, 30 km around the plant site is dead land and no one is allowed to go into that area without special permission or purpose.
Just over a year ago, we had another nuclear power plant disaster in Fukoshima, Japan. This one is far more serious yet a lot less time was given this one by our western presses and TV outlets. Why? To my knowledge, Japan has not given the world an outright answer or admission that they have had a meltdown.
This plant has been spewing millions of litres of contaminated water daily into our oceans, including radioactivity into our atmosphere, since that meltdown.
Just last week I read an article about some very radioactive gas headed to North America. Is anyone monitoring this problem in Canada and the U.S. or are they just sticking their heads into the sand and ignoring the situation? So the question here is are Canada and the U.S. monitoring our air and water on our western coast for radioactive contamination from the Fukoshima plant?
A few months ago, a huge dead fish was discovered off the coast of the U.S.
All that was said was the cause of death of this fish wasn’t known. The question here is was this fish checked for radiation poisoning? It should have been checked and then reported to the people what the findings were.
How much pollution are we getting into the oceans from ships and yachts dumping their sewage into the water without treatment? A few weeks ago, TV showed that the Canadian navy confiscated a drug shipment. They just cut the bags open and dumped it into the ocean. The U.S. has offered to take the Syrian war chemical out of Syria and offshore to dispose of them. Does this mean dumping into the ocean? We know from past information that the Russians have been dumping their nuclear waste into the ocean.
A few years ago, the Canadian government sent a ship through the Arctic water and flatly stated they were not sending a sewage ship with it. Who else is and has been dumping it’s untreated garbage into the oceans?
We have had two world wars with thousands of ships being sunk to the bottom of the ocean with, God only knows, all kinds of chemicals, fuels, war equipment and whatever we the citizens of the world will never know.
I know that the oceans are huge but 100 years of dumping into them for easy garbage disposal has polluted them to a certain extent and a lot of this pollution may have been transferred to shores around the world.
No one really knows for sure about this but is anyone trying to see what is happening? I don’t think so, but if we do have scientists monitoring this why are we not informed about it. Then we wonder why our marine life has deformities and strange cycles and activities.
Absolutely everything we create creates waste to build it. Eventually everything like homes, cars, etc., have created a lot of waste to produce and after time even the homes are torn down and disposed of. There is nothing humans do that doesn’t create waste and garbage. It’s a big problem and we had better address all of it before it’s too late. There are many more avenues of recycling to explore.
I have pictures and article on a large plastic bottle pollution in the Pacific ocean. The claim is that this bundle of floating plastic is larger than mainland U.S. and a inventor in Europe is trying to build a machine to swallow this up from the ocean.
Many of our environmental organizations want everything to be shut down. That won’t happen and that won’t work. What we need is good and honest communications so everyone can have input into our world, not just a few politicians who only think of money and large corporations with the same mindset.
I am not too long for this world but future generations are going to have to live with what we are doing in the name of money. It is long past time that a common sense approach for the benefit of the world and all on it prevails.
I just received a blog and checked out “Radiation Leaks at Fukoshima” To put it politely, I am totally shocked but I didn’t know it was that bad. Some of it I took with a grain of salt but there is just too much there to ignore. A 500 per cent increase in radiation levels.
Are we ever going to return to common sense, morality, ethics, accountability and responsibility before it’s to late or after we find out our Earth as a whole is dying from our neglect? We should be listening to the natives, to whom the health of the land is above everything else.
E.T. (Tom) Skoreyko
Red Deer