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re: Love Canal
Larry J — (archived)

Love Canal happened in an era when virtually everyone, especially the government, freely dumped toxic wastes. Old military bases and other government facilities have required billions to clean them up from decades of dumping. I spent 1990 on an Aleutian island that had been a massive toxic waste dump since 1943. They were just getting around to cleaning it up. "60 Minutes" has ran episodes discussing the apparent dumping of toxic chemicals at places like Anniston, AL (former home of Ft. McCellan, a chemical weapons depot) over the years.

As Tom has pointed out many times, there are quite a few people who seem to believe that if the government doesn't do something, it won't ever get done by anyone. Your example of meat inspectors is an illustration of that mindset. Tell me, how many tainted meat cases have there been over the past 10 years in the US? How could these cases have happened since government inspectors are already on the job?

Don't think for a minute that only government cares about a clean environment. I remember hearing environmentalists back in the 1980s saying that only a socialist government could be trusted to take care of the environment. Most of them learned otherwise when the Berlin wall fell - the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries were some of the most polluted places on the planet, far more so than even Love Canal.

Fortunately, at least in prosperous countries, great efforts have been made to clean up the environment. Things are actually a lot better now than they were 40 years ago. About a year ago, I remember seeing an old VW Beetle with an Earth First bumper sticker. If that person really cared about the environment, he'd scrap that old polluting clunker for a modern vehicle. A modern car produces about 1/400th as much pollution as a 1960s vintage car and quite a few get better gas mileage, too. I rented a Buick Century back in August that got over 31 MPG (far better than the old Beetles) and polluted less, too.

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