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  3. Environmental Countdown: Where We’re Losing and Winning From m

Environmental Countdown: Where We’re Losing and Winning From m

游客2024-03-02  7
问题               Environmental Countdown: Where We’re Losing and Winning
    From man-made deserts to powerful acid rain, the world is peppered with examples of what poor education or unfriendly attitudes can do to the planet that must feed and clothe us all. Untold numbers of people die prematurely as a direct result of air and water pollution worldwide.
    wesley Marx, a journalist specializing in environmental issues, reports here on the pollution "hot spots". He also cites some outstanding examples of recovery from environmental disasters, proving we can all share in the solutions as well.
    Ghost Sea
    Muynak used to be a thriving port and fish-processing center on the Aral Sea in Central Asia. But the city is now 30 miles from. water, and Muynak’s canneries (罐头食品厂) must import fish from the distant Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans.
    Once the world’s fourth largest lake, the Aral Sea has shrunk by 40 percent, with its water level down almost 43 feet. Some 10,000 square miles of former seabed now lie exposed as a salty desert.
    The Aral is dying because state economic planners diverted water from its two feeder rivers in order to irrigate cotton fields. What little water reaches the Aral and its deltas is a soup of fertilizers and pesticides. Yet people drink this liquid and prepare their food with it. There is no other water to use, since failing ground-water levels have dried up most wells and springs.
    Winds blow salt and dust from the dry seabed as far as the Arctic shore, 1,500 miles away. Massive sandstorms can deposit nearly a quarter ton of sand per acre. Caustic (腐蚀性的) salts and farm chemicals in this sand have accelerated a public-health disaster. Infant mortality is high, and throat cancer and stomach disorders are endemic.
    Like a natural air conditioner, the Aral once moderated the region’s desert climate. No more. As the sea contracts, summers become warmer, winters colder. The growing season has shortened ten days. Ironically, some cotton farmers, for whose benefit the water was diverted, have been forced to switch to rice because it has a faster growing season.
    Rain That Melts Cities
    The 6,000 historic houses, monasteries and churches of Krakow, Poland, are architectural masterpieces. But today they look as ff they had a severe case of leprosy (麻风病). Stone saints are faceless; statues have dissolved into black rock piles. The reason is: the factories and coal mines of Upper Silesia spew out a staggering amount of pollution--five times as much sulfur dioxide per square mile, for example, as Germany’s industrialized Ruhr Valley produces.
    Sulfur dioxide can react chemically with marble and limestone, cracking and dissolving the structures. It can also combine with nitrogen oxide and water vapor to form a powerful acid rain, which among other things hastens the decay of railroad tracks; some trains running through the region must slow to 25 miles per hour. At least 445,000 acres of forest have died as well.
    Toxic metals from factory smokestacks have polluted the soils to the point where vegetable gardens in Upper Silesia contain levels of cadmium, mercury, lead and zinc 30 to 70 percent higher than World Health Organization standards.
    The contaminated air, water and soil are causing serious health problems. The rates of cancer and respiratory diseases in Upper Silesia are 30 to 50 percent higher than the national average. Life expectancy is shorter. Some villages have been declared unfit for human habitation, and their residents have been relocated.
    Despite their bleakness (令人沮丧的状况), there is every reason to believe these and other trouble spots can be turned around, for elsewhere in the world, dedicated people have already met the challenge.
    South Korea: Where Money Grows on Trees
    By the early 1970s, villagers in this Asian country were cutting down trees for fuel faster than the woodlands could regrow. Even fallen leaves and twigs, which build soil fertility, were being raked and burned.
    Unable to soak up heavy rains, the barren slopes could not protect the urban lowlands from mud slides and floods. After one storm, the Han River overflowed, drowning 672 people in the capital of Seoul and leaving another 326,000 homeless.
    The catastrophe shocked the people of South Korea into action and prompted an ambitious ten-year plan to replant some 2.5 million acres of eroding forestlands.
    The task was discouraging. Small landowners possess most of the woodlands, but communal rules allow any villager to cut firewood anywhere he pleases. This traditional arrangement deprived the landowners of a crucial incentive to replant: they could not claim the trees--and profitable wood--as their own.
    To get the job done, the government asked each village to form a forestry association, with an elected head, to replant, maintain and eventually harvest the surrounding woodlands. The government provided seedlings, fertilizer and technical assistance. And landowners were guaranteed ten percent of the yield from forest products.
    The response was amazing. Some 20,000 local forestry associations sprang up, and their two million members devoted a month each spring to planting trees, and returned each fall to hoe up deadly weeds. As a result, 2.7 million acres were replanted in six years, well ahead of schedule. The green countryside is not only more productive but also safer. "The replanted hillsides and watersheds can better soak up rainfall and resist erosion," says Gregersen. "Damaging floods and the risk of killer landslides have been reduced."
    Denmark: Waste Not, Want Not
    One winter day in 1972 a Danish tanker truck loaded with phenol (苯酚), a corrosive acidic compound, spun out of control and turned over. Its poisonous cargo spread into a stream, killing fish and endangering the water supply of a nearby village. After cleaning up the spill, government officials took new safety measures for the transport of dangerous substances.
    While other nations rely on special dump sites, Denmark, a small country that depends on ground water for drinking, took steps to deal with the problem closer to its source. Each company in this northern European nation must disclose to the local municipality the types ,and quantifies of waste it produces. The town issues a permit for on-site treatment or recycling, or the company delivers its hazardous wastes, carefully separated and labeled, to one of the 21 transfer stations. These facilities transport 178,000 tons of wastes annually to a central treatment plant.
    Each Danish municipality also has its own chemicals-collection station for household wastes. Participation is voluntary, but by making drop-offs convenient, Denmark reduces the temptation for homeowners to dump thei. r cleaning agents, used motor oil and garden pesticides down the nearest drain.
    Today Denmark has what Bruce W. Piasecki, a research professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., calls "one of the most comprehensive hazardous-waste-management systems in the world". Other nations are beginning to catch up to the Danish insight: that efficiency is served and safety enhanced by dealing with problems closer to their source.
    The rescue of these sites from environmental disaster is a lesson of hope. With determination and energy, we can clean up the worst damages, however awesome the task. And with the foresight that experience and science have engendered, we can also safeguard our world’s environment for those who will enjoy it in the decades ahead. [br] In Denmark, hazardous waste must be carefully separated and labeled before being delivered to______.
选项
答案 one of the 21 transfer stations
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