On Mon, 26 Jan 2004, Marvin Johnston wrote:
> A saying I happen to like is there would be no such thing as the
> Environmental Movement t'were it not for scientific illiteracy. If the
> goal were *really* to clean up pollution, then we would not be dealing
> with countries whose idea of waste disposal is to dump it in the river.
Yes, and this would still be going on were it not for the reporter that
traveled to China and took photographs of streams piled with waste and
little bare-footed kids picking parts out of scary looking electronic
scrap (lots of sharp edges). It still goes on of course, but to much less
of a degree since new laws were passed barring any scrap electronics from
being shipped overseas (at least here in California, and at least as long
as the various recyclers are willing to play by the rules).
The ACCRC, for example, used to use middlemen who were shipping the stuff
to China until that article hit (and in their defense, they had no idea
this was going on, same with 99% of the recyclers out there). Now they
audit every plant that they send scrap to and, per California regulations,
nothing they send out leaves the United States. Everything is processed
with recyclers that do the refining within the borders of the US,
preferbly within the state itself.
Yes, environmental regulations are often onerous, sometimes contradictory,
many times ineffective, but the problem is not the laws being passed but
the people passing them and the lobbyists working on behalf of the gross
polluters who are not interested in maintaining sensible and ethical
practices but are after the almighty dollar so that rich people can become
obscenely rich. The laws are a result of a broken process.
Sorry, there I got being a far-left-leaning liberal bitch again.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
Received on Mon Jan 26 2004 - 17:33:39 GMT