Perhaps the Worst Environmental Crime of the 20th Century That You Never Knew About

Photo courtesy of DonkeyHotey Flickr Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/6143809369

Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

The old button from the Environmental Club days which I just happened to find on Earth Day! It is a little beat up (particularly the ends of the ribbon), but no worse for the wear, I think. And it is one of the few items that I have left from those days, so it carries a lot of great memories for me! Nothing Changes Until You Do!

Here is a picture of a very similar logo, with the same message, that was on the t-shirt that I purchased from the BCC Environmental Club and, if memory serves me correctly, may even have helped to make. There were a few projects like that which club members, myself included, were regularly involved with. It has been so long, however, that I no longer recall specifically if I actually helped to make these or not, although I do believe so, since I remember seeing the process of the t-shirts being dyed. In any case, I loved this t-shirt, and have kept it ever since, even if I do not regularly wear it. Since it was part of my experience with the BCC Environmental Club days, as well as more generally having an environmental theme, it seemed appropriate to share it here. 

"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed."

~Mahatma Gandhi

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

  

~John F. Kennedy  


“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”

~ Chief Si’ahl (Seattle) 

Environmentalism went on my radar in the 1980's. I remember hearing Sting, the frontman for The Police, on the Donahue Show, I believe, talking about how the Amazon Rainforest was being depleted and, more generally, destroyed. My father was watching that episode (he always watched Donahue), and he said that if the Amazon is destroyed, the planet is basically destroyed, because the Amazon was almost like the lungs of the planet.

I did not understand all that was involved at the time. Hell, probably I still do not. But the economics, the poor farmers trying to make a living, and feeling that this is the only way, all of that eluded me at the time. All I knew was that destroying the Amazon would lead to the end of the world, and so we had better protect it at all costs.

Fast-forward a few decades later. The Amazon is still under threat, perhaps more now than ever before, given that Brazil elected Bolsonaro. And the pictures revealing just how much of the Amazon has been destroyed are as shocking as they are heartbreaking.

But let us not merely dwell on the far away rainforests of northern Brazil. We see incredible levels of pollution still being belched into the air regularly. We see plastics bottles and  other single use items clogging waterways and the ocean, and choking off life there (sometimes literally). We see nations electing "leaders" like Trump and Bolnosaro who are opening formerly protected lands for development and profits for the few.

Here is a link to an article that explore the most senseless environmental crime of the 20th century, during the days of the old Soviet Union.

Truth be told, I had not heard about this one before. I had heard that environmental standards in the old Communist bloc countries tended to be very poor, and it seemed like it just was not a priority at all. It just demonstrates that we human beings just do not seem to appreciate all that we have been blessed with...at least not until it is already too late.

Is it too late already?

When you see video of people still indiscriminately dumping raw garbage, one bucket after another, intro the ocean, or you see the smog that is proving deadly in cities in China and India, and you see that the nation that has historically contributed far and away the most towards the greenhouse gases that are warming the Earth is still grappling with even believing that the planet is indeed actually warming, let alone that human activity might be in large part responsible for it, it definitely then sometimes feels like it is too late.

That I cannot say for sure. But we can learn from the past. And here is one environmental crime from the past that you might not have heard about before. 

THE MOST SENSELESS ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME OF THE 20TH CENTURY BY CHARLES HOMANS, JUN 14, 2017:

https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-senseless-environment-crime-of-the-20th-century-russia-whaling-67774?fbclid=IwAR2TIQiw6TcQNAJrSeOaw-vpebnT6kOYPhVdOQQhKrrmS3uW40FRA9M2PHo