Those three million gallons of toxic water released into the Animas River in Durango made riveting headlines. Easily traceable yellow water, polluted enough to kill all life in the river, instantly destroying crops of farmers who irrigated with that water, but now could no longer use it.
The spill also instantly ended careers of local river rafters who ran any part of that stretch of waterway, as well as the careers of local fishing guides. Tourists are canceling and staying away; and tourism is the major industry in Durango. The full effects of a river polluted with life-killing water are still unfolding.
But here's the most shocking part of the whole episode: The Gold King mine from which the spill came started in the early 1880's. It was abandoned in 1923; more than 90 years ago. This raises serious issues, addressed below the squiggle
We will certainly begin to see a lot more of these kinds of 'unnatural' disasters. In many places all over the world, the earth has been plundered for decades, even centuries. They are sites that previous owners never considered spending money to clean up after themselves or to restore the area from which they profited back to its original livability.
And now it's payback time.
The predictable upcoming disasters are usually tossed into the category of 'Global Warming.' But it's much worse than that tired catchphrase. It's years and decades of plastic-lined pools holding thousands of gallons of toxic pig manure that overflows and seeps into the surrounding environment. It's the discharge of contaminants from processing crude oil and dirty coal that has been said by scientists to increase cancer rates in those who live near the plants and breathe that air.
And yet, all of that is only part of the whole.
There's also the unlimited growth of humanity, with families all over the world having five kids or more, each of whom will want their own section of road and their own vehicle to drive it on, their own plot of earth with their own house, their own supply of electricity and gas with surrounding earth dug up to lay down the wires and tubes to transport all their utilities. And all those children will have more children, and every one of them will use up a bit more of the planet, paving more of it, cutting down more oxygen-producing forests, expanding neighborhoods into wilderness areas and making wildlife homeless.
We humans have largely escaped the consequences of befouling of our own nest. But all the past contamination has been quietly waiting. Quietly growing more toxic. Though the profiteers gave no thought to the future, it became the karma of their descendants.
We are those present-day descendants. We are the ones who can, if we look, see today's air in China, which is often so polluted that it's a vision-clouding fog. Runners in races must wash the residue of the air off their skin when the race is over, because toxicity remains on their skin. China's air so bad that its pollution can be seen from space.
We are the ones who should be startled that the open water of the 2016 Olympic city of Rio de Janeiro is so polluted, it makes rowers on the Olympic venue sick. Nearly one third of the young athletes competing in the recent World Rowing Junior Championships became ill with vomiting and diarrhea from just rowing a boat on that water! Rivers and lakes were found to be polluted with "dangerous" levels of bacteria and viruses.
The earth has always been able to recover from human destruction. But we have now overwhelmed our planet's ability to protect us. We are too many. The industrial damage done to provide those in the 'civilized' parts of the world with comfort and convenience is depleting basic human survival mechanisms.
Humanity's survival requires the rain forest's oxygen, but the clear cutters who can make several thousand bucks from one good tree don't care. Personal profit is always more important than species survival to those who stand to make money.
So no one is putting all the pieces together to see the big picture. Just as oil companies and purchased politicians are still denying that there's such a thing as climate change, there will be total denial that today's pollution from industry and over-population threatens both the planet and the human species.
But we still have pollution from the past to deal with; as witness the Gold King mine. We will discover things that were covered up; payoffs for officials to sign off on clean ups. There will be more examples like Animas River, with side effects again spreading in ways no one ever envisioned. Toxic water that irrigates crops but makes them inedible. Lead and other heavy metals that damage the brains of fetuses and children.
The Gold King mine was closed and abandoned nearly a century ago. How many more 'Superfund' sites will have to be cleaned up? How many more remain to be discovered? Is there enough money to clean them up? If there is, will we spend it? Or will the consequences of humanity's rape of the earth become just another political issue, debated and denied, while we ignore the fact that our species is perhaps being slowly poisoned into extinction?