Brooke Cope

Love Canal Assignment

I posted the Love Canal article along with a video about the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. I asked the following question: are environmental hazards something we should be concerned about on a daily basis. Here are the responses:

1. Well I think it is. It is kinda scary and I think we should be more aware and concerned about what er are doing with our environment so that awful mishaps like these don't happen more!!!

2. Of course we need to worry about this every day! The fact that these companies can cause such massive damage to the environment and have hundreds of workers due in these accidents and continue to operate is appalling. I can't believe these accidents basically go unnoticed. We need to get off oil and go to a safer, more powerful and more reliable energy source, nuclear! There have been 3 accidents in nuclear energy throughout history and basically no one has been hurt from these. But society looks at these accidents as if the world was destroyed. Meanwhile oil companies lose millions of gallons of oil into the environment at least once every 2-3 years and everybody looks the other way. It is unbelievable how stupid people are.

3. Of course we should be careful when drilling and take precautions that spills don't happen or can be better contained after an accident, but there are thousands of off shore drilling sites in the world and they provide a great supply of oil in areas that wouldn't be used for anything otherwise(what else are you going to do with 100 square meters a mile off the coast of Alaska?). There is plenty of research being done to find other energy sources, but until oil can be replaced (or we run out) It would be stupid to bag off shore drilling because of fear of an environmental accidents. So... no i would say there are better things to think about on a daily basis.

4. I agree with the comment above on every point!

5.Any hazard that is "environmental" means it can affect a large group of people, animals, plants, or other life or resources. So yes, we should be worried about each of them. Whether we worry about them daily, monthly, or whatever should probably depend on whether we can do something about them daily, monthly, etc.

6. Yes we definitely need to take more precautions to care for our environment to prevent spills and to better deal with them when they happen. Many people are very careless when it comes to protecting our environment however I don't think we should completely stop drilling until we are able to replace it with other energy sources. Emphasis should be placed on finding ways to better use other, more environmentally friendly, energy sources. 

7. It interesting to think how often words get thrown around and their genuine, detonated meanings are lost. In short I agree with comments 2, 3, and 5 and add my YES to theirs. Although, I would promote algae energy research over an immediate energy overhaul into nuclear power.

8.We should be aware of environmental hazards but we don't need to make rash judgements. The love canal is a huge lesson and has brought about many changes in how we regulate disposal of all kinds of waste. The oil spill is the same thing from mistakes come new technology and rules to help us move forward. With every advance comes new challenges. The greatest environmental threat today is electronics using tons of energy and creating hazardous waste. Every step we take has a consequence we need to be aware of the impact and help protect ourselves and the environment in a reasonable way.

9. Though these issues are dangerous, I believe there are much more important things to be worrying about on a daily basis.

10. Yes, environmental hazards should be looked at on a daily basis, because if not, we will find ourselves in situation we can't get out of. If we take things day by day, we will be able to control and better predict what is going to happen in the future.

My Responses:

1. Are Environmental Hazards something we should be concerned about on a daily basis?

          Yes, I believe we should pay close attention to these hazards. Though they usually don't have an immediate effect on us, they can be detrimental in the long run. Our environment controls the health of the people and if their are hazardous materials in the environment, there will be serious consequences for us.

2. Why should we care about something that happened over 30 years ago?

         Though this happened 30 years ago, and we are not feeling the consequences of it now, there is much to learn from it. As more disasters strike, we learn more about how we should handle them. We need to look into our history and understand what we need to do inorder to avoid repeating these negative events again. 

3. Were you aware that environmental tragedies of this magnitude still exist today?

        In complete honesty, I was not aware of either of these tragedies before this assignment. Because I feel like I live in a safe environment and have the attitude that "that would never happen to me," I don't often pay attention to this type of news. It is scary to think that these types of think can happen anywhere, and at anytime. I definitely need to pay more attention to these issues.