Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Melissa Seipel - Love Canal

Three Lessons Linger from BP Oil Spill
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/20/opinion/brazile-earth-day-bp/index.html?iref=allsearch

I also shared the story about the Love Canal Oil Spill and these are the comments about it:


1.       It could happen again.  If we aren't taking proper measures to take care of chemical disposal and policy regulation future generations of children could be affected. 
2.       It probably is still affecting people today and we can learn from that and try to prevent it from happening again. 
3.       The same irresponsibility may continue to take place, because we rarely ever learn from the mistakes we learn, so we have to always watch out.  Sometimes we forget and need to be reminded.  There are other pressures and unwillingness to take responsibility that may tempt us to make those mistakes again. 
4.       Don’t do it again!  It’s bad and we have to make sure it won’t happen again. 
5.       We should learn from it so things like that don’t happen again.  It good for environmental awareness about poorly managing waste.  Also a metaphor for family issues.  Resolve conflict when it happens.  Don’t just hide it. 
6.       We shouldn't drink water with chemicals in it J no matter what.  Even if it looks like regular water.  And we learn how important it is to look again.  We need to remember that there could be repercussions years ahead. 
7.       History shows that we tend to repeat ourselves and so we don’t repeated something in the past we need to remember things like this so we can change and be different in the future,
8.       The details change but people do terrible things all the time. 
9.       Because the effects will continued to have effects on society long after this thing is cleaned up because the consequences are so long lasting. 
10.   We need to learn from the past to recognize the starting patterns of problems.  It can be compared to the beginnings of wars or any other problems we see repeat themselves in history.  


My comments:

In your opinion are environmental hazards something we should be concerned about on a daily basis.
I think environmental hazards are very important and should be taken seriously.  However, I don’t think that every citizen should, on a daily basis, concern themselves with this issue.  Large environmental problems are usually caused by larger companies or organizations and individuals rarely have anything to do with them.  Nor do they have the ability to prevent them by themselves.  I believe there should be people and organizations that need to be working to prevent and control hazards on a day to day basis, but it is not something regular citizens really have anything to do with.  The only exceptions I can think of are the usage of pesticides and other such household chemicals.  Those should be taken care of by all individuals. 
Why should we care about something that happened over 30 years ago?
Like all of the comments above, I also agree that we need to learn from the past.  Problems do tend to repeat themselves in history and we need to actively learn from those mistakes/disasters in order for them to not be repeated.  The drastic consequences lend themselves to much public attention and hopefully the outcry can tighten regulations and procedures for the disposal of toxic waste in the future.  I know steps have already been taken, which is a good sign, but there seems to still be a far way to go. 
Environmental tragedies still exist today; what can we do today to mitigate these problems.
I think the greatest changes that need to be made are in enforcing regulations.  I know the government has already taken great measure to keep disasters like the Love Canal from ever happening again, but we still continue to see problems arise.  Companies try to scrape by with minimal costs or people get lazy or careless when handling their toxic waste or other harmful substances.  Perhaps more frequent and rigorous inspections would encourage better responsibility.  Problems like the BP oil spill could have been prevented if the rigging had only been up to standard.  I think this is where our system can improve the most.  

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