Your Questions About Green Living

The Expert answers:

Maybe the Greenhouse Effect, and therefore global warming? That seems to be very pertinent to today’s environmental issues

The Expert answers:

Environmental issues have been a concern for hundreds of years in different forms and in different nations. The U.S. Started to pass legislation acts in 1972. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) was created in 1970. In the 1970s the public begin to take note of environmental issues. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth started in the early 1970s. Earth Day started in the 1970s. In the 1960s is when environmental issues started to come into light in the United States, specifically air pollution and oil spills. From what I remember when I was young in the 1980s, environmental issues emerged more in the media in the late 80s. The Exxon Valdez spill was big news in 1989. The other issues that I remember were acid rain and air pollution, more specifically “NOx emission.” Environmental issues were a concern in the in the early 80s but it was not until the media started to cover more and more stories did it become a big concern. The media started to cover court cases covering environmental legal issues. “In the early 1980s, environmental justice emerged as a concept in the United States, fueled by a mounting disdain within Black, Hispanic and indigenous communities that were subject to hazardous and polluting industries located predominantly in their neighborhoods.[5] This prompted the launch of the Environmental justice movement which adopted a civil rights and social justice approach to environmental justice [6] and grew organically from dozens, even hundreds, of local struggles, events and a variety of other social movements.” (Wiki) In the late 80s and early 90s more people were involved and voiced their opinions on environmental issues.Today I hear more about environmental issues than ever before, especially about global warming effect.

The Expert answers:

First, I’d ask myself what makes Florida unique in their approach to waste management. One thing pops to mind – the depth to groundwater. I think Florida generally has groundwater very close to the surface in much of the state. Therefore, any kind of land disposal practices, or recycling activities that could potentially release to the ground can have a dramatic impact on water quality.

Another thing about Florida that comes to mind, is that it has a lot of shoreline, hence many boaters. One little known aspect of this – at least to many people, is that boats of a certain size are required to carry safety flares. Safety flares, by law, have a shelf life, after which the flares must be replaced. Often the flares being replaced are ok to use as flares, but many boaters dispose of them inappropriately. That’s why many many thousands of flares wind up dumped in the water. Florida is one state that has developed on a county-by-county basis a way to manage these out of date flares. They get collected and burned in burn units, which just vent the emissions to the air. This can be an air problem.

The Expert answers:

Extreme environmentalism was spawned from socialists and communists intent on changing the way we live our lives.

The Expert answers:

I’m not a young person but the answer to your question is clearly money and politics. Our prime minister and many of his MPs are from Alberta which gets about half its income from the tar sands. No way they are ever going to seriously slow the booming expansion going on up north. All politicians to pay lip service to environmental issues but they duck for cover if votes are threatened. Take the cruel Canadian commercial seal hunt carried out by non-native Newfoundlands every spring. It involves the savage slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seal pups for their skins and has been condemned around the world. Well, every single member of parliament supports it because they’re all afraid of losing votes in Atlantic Canada. I can’t imagine many of them picking up a club and crushing a baby seals’ skull themselves, but they’ll happily subsidize others doing so if it gets them a few votes. Our current politicians won’t be around when the real environmental consequences swing back at us and they know it. Only the next few years of profit and power matter to them.