Mar. 03, 2003 - 16:54 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

For Thought

Sometimes things reveal the realities that us poor folk cope with daily.

An article in Bonnie's today's entry is about discarded computers and associated equipment being shipped to China. Makes things simple for our landfills here in the US. In China though those computers and related equipment are torn apart piece by piece and scavanged for what ever might be profitable. Some things are melted down for the copper content, some for gold. I guess it is just like the pig, everything is used but the oink and they are working on that.

Levels of lead and mercury are way over the top. Pollution has contaminated one river to the extent that drinking water has to be trucked in.

The Chinese government is trying (although half heartedly perhaps) to prevent the influx of computers and associated equipment. But as ever, money talks, the more money the louder it speaks. So the big shipboard containers are diverted to other ports in China where the petty officials are bought off by a share in the take.

Things are smeltered without considering the noxious fumes occuring from such activity.

Reminds me of an ongoing activity here in the Globeville section of Denver. By the Stockyards Complex was a huge smokestack which was all that was left of the Grant smelter, north of the Globeville area was AS&R which also smelted many things. The earth in that area was so contaminated that all kinds of efforts are being expended to clean it up. The Shattuck site by Overland Park is a part of the big cleanup. I used to roam and play in that neighborhood as a kid. At one time there was a bus garage built on top of an area near I-25 where radium was processed -- way back when.

I guess as we progress we learn the hard way the things we have done in the past that cause great problems in the present day.

For now the problems here are solved by burying radioactive waste in deserted parts of our country. However those places will soon approach being full to capacity plus oversight will eventually become lax and leakage of one kind or another take place. Other harmful things are shipped overseas or dumped in the seas of the world.

Some people scoff at our space program. I don't. At least we might figure out how to ship our waste to the Moon or Asteroids. And maybe someday if enough effort and money is expended we might find a habitable planet that is reasonably uncontaminated where we can go to live. Some pie in-the-sky scientists will possibly come up with a method to oxygenate and terraform our Moon, prevent us dumping there and give us a place to live.

When the earth was less populated many things returned to a natural state over time, but nowadays there seems to be too much waste to allow that to happen. I read recently that newspapers and magazines in landfills remain as they where when dumped years ago -- packed too tight to bio-degrade. Our sewage systems get overloaded and have to be expanded time after time. Soon our landfills might cover as large an area as the city that provides the fill, many times deeper too.

My Grandmother was a thrifty lady who found uses for most anything. One of her maxims, (which I have heard over and over through the years) "Waste not, want not," could maybe be the way the world should be living now.

Anyhow, here there is much food For Thought . . . . . . . . . . .

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