Many years ago copper was mined commercially on the Blue Hill Peninsula; an area known today for its parklike setting and wild coastal beauty. In the 1960’s and 70’s large copper deposits were mined by multi-national concerns that left piles of spent ore, from which leftover metals continue to leach into coastal streams. The environmental effects may be limited in the local scope to wild plants and animals. But if there are fewer clams in Blue Hill Bay that does diminish people who live there, or over on the other side of Penobscot Bay, or other people in Maine, our country, and the entire world. These little critters are worth the EPA’s recent listing of the former Kerramerican Copper Mine site in Brooksville, Maine to their Superfund Priority List. You or I should care that a few bugs or bunnies die, get sick, or can not reproduce, even though we would not be aware of their existence if not for the environmentalists’ fuss. The Blue Hill Bay ecosystem mixes with the Gulf of Maine then to the open Atlantic where currents play under the waves mixing its bounty around the globe. Add all similar industrial insults from other waste streams from all the coastal towns and cities on every inhabited shore. As difficult as that may be to take in, try to imagine the economic cost if natural systems failed to absorb and recycle our waste. A 1997 study estimated the value of the earth’s disposal service to us at 33 trillion dollars, twice the total of every country’s gross national products.
You may believe the earth is a female deity, lovingly cleaning up after her progeny, or a creative gift from God for us to use as directed by scripture, or a spaceship of happenstance. No matter, you must realize that there is a limit to nature’s ability to put up with our waste, and all those little bits of waste can only flow down to the ocean. The sea is the ultimate destination for water and any natural or manmade compounds that it can carry. Without care we will end swimming in a sea of our own making with only the wits that got us there to aid our rescue, and one other thing; the realization that we must change to survive.
1 comment:
To move from the pretty but unextraordinary home-ground of coastal Maine to the apocalyptic vision of us all drowning (but thirsty!) in our own crap--yep, that surely does the small to large progression.
Material like this is hard to handle--although there is no 'I'--still it tends to get shrill or depressive. But I think you give it a nice matter-of-fact tone while not offering any pollyanna bromides.
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