Christian Derenthal - Love Canal Report

I posted an article about a less known oil spill along with the love canal tragedy.  I posted a question for people to respond to and these were the responses to the question; Were you aware that environmental tragedies of this magnitude still exist today? 

1.     Ryan - Yes. I don't know if I am aware of every single time that it happens (I am sure it is more often then just the ones I have heard about) but I would not say this is an uncommon thing today.

2.     Mikyn - yes, yes I was

3.     Lauren - I have really only been aware of the bigger incidents like BP obviously. I wouldn't say I was aware this was a common occurrence. And I'm not that aware of all the effects, especially environmentally.

4.     Kyle – yes

5.     Brian – No

6.     Katie - I didn't know that things like this are common, I guess I only knew about the big spills that have been all over the news.

7.     Drew - Yeah, it's unfortunate that these spills happen at all. We're fortunate to live in a place where we hold the responsible companies accountable for their actions, and that we have the power to make sure they clean up.

8.     Corene - Yes, I knew about this. It doesn't seem like pipelines break all that often.

9.     Tracy - It's a difficult situation because we need and use tons of oil and its a shame that these people have to pay the price for our high dependency on oil.

10. Nicole - It's too bad that these types of preventable accidents occur so often.

Based on the impact environmental tragedies affect you/your family how likely are you to take action against disasters like this one?

            I think lots of people can get fired up upon reading the accounts of some of the environmental disasters that occur every day or each month or year.  Lot’s of people make comments about how it’s unacceptable and needs to be changed, but I feel like a lot of people rarely actually do anything about it.  When people are really affected by a disaster, then they finally will get up and do something about it, but until it becomes personal, most people don’t do anything.

In your opinion are environmental hazards something we should be concerned about on a daily basis.

            I think we need to take environmental hazards one at a time.  There are enough people, that if everyone just was consistently working on helping one or two to be fixed, then we would have a great impact.  Instead of having a few rich or passionate people try and fix all the problems, if we all just became involved on a small daily basis, then we could have a much bigger impact on the world. 

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

             I believe that it is our past that helps to define who we are today.  If we are not concerned and preventing past dangers, then they can very easily come back to haunt us.  We need to be moving forward and forging new paths, but always wary of the dangers and pitfalls from past disasters.  It is the mistakes of the past that help to create the successes of the future.

Personal Reactions

            I am deeply touched by the Love Canal Tragedy.  It saddens me to see so many people get hurt or be affected by something that is very preventable.  I feel that most of the disasters can easily be prevented if we are just a little more personal responsible and careful.  Of course, I recognize that mistakes will happen and people will be hurt always, but I feel like most of the disease or death caused by these accidents is preventable.