Mark McKinney

Love Canal Assignment

I showed my friends and family an article about the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico along with the Love Canal video. I asked them, “Were you aware that environmental tragedies of this magnitude still exist today?” These were their comments:

1.      No, that sucks. There needs to be way better laws to regulate these situations.

2.      Yeah, but there’s not much I can do about it.

3.      I hear about it sometimes, but I’m never really sure what’s actually happening.

4.      No, I never really read this kind of stuff.

5.      I thought I was. I never knew they existed on this large of a scale.

6.      Sort of. I’m just shocked that something like this could happen in the U.S.

7.      When it said Love Canal, I thought it was going to be romantic. You ruined my evening. So no… I wasn’t aware.

8.      I actually did read about this a long time ago, but I forgot about it.

9.      I had no idea. People need to work harder to publicize these things.

10.  I didn’t know, and I’m personally disappointed that I didn’t. Things like this will continue to happen if no one does anything to prevent them.

My Reaction:

1. Environmental tragedies still exist today; what can we do today to mitigate these problems?

Awareness is the first step. People can’t fix a problem if they don’t know it exists. Projects such as this are good to help people recognize these issues. Once the issues are recognized by the media, people can lobby for congress to enact more regulations and prevent further tragedies.

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

Yes. For those involved, environmental hazards exceed a daily basis. We should fight for a better understanding of these situations so that others will help if these crises ever happen to us.

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

We should care about this because the same thing may eventually happen to us. Everyone looks the other way on issues like this until it happens to them. By ignoring these events, we empower large corporations such as the Hooker Chemical Company to continue dumping their wastes without receiving any consequences. People should end ignorance of these issues by fighting for change.