We are now engaged in a dangerous and morally bankrupt can-kicking exercise, hoping to put off the worst effects our waste-handling practices until we are gone and someone else has to deal with the problems we’ve created. A friend once related that a scientist she knows said that more than climate change, more than population growth, and more than resource depletion, he fears the toxic wastes we’ve dumped into the environment and those which are still stored at industrial sites including nuclear power plants. He said these wastes have the potential to do more damage to life on earth than all other hazards combined.
While that assessment may or may not be correct, it does offer a perspective that would be useful for us to ponder. What if we survive as a species far into the future, but lack the means–financial, technical, or organizational–to contain those wastes? Given our record to date, that question by itself should caution against an optimistic assessment of whether we can bear the legacy costs of industrial society’s toxic pollution.
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