When it comes to maintaining different ecosystems, from the chapters we’ve read in this book so far, I’ve noticed that a great problem with people is that they don’t understand what the consequences of their actions will be. I feel that this is largely due to a lack of knowledge. Along with not having a lot of knowledge about what kind of damage is being caused, people also take nature (in this chapter, marine life) for granted. A lot of human caused changes in the past have rendered marine ecosystems lifeless. Decline in oxygen levels have suffocated the animals (79). People only start to fix things when they start to realize how a decline in a specific ecosystem is going to hurt them soon. Otherwise people may see “swamps as frog-ponds and… as ulcers or sores in a man’s face spoiling the beauty of a field” (83).
It’s interesting to see how marine ecosystems usually aren’t regarded as a “life-form”. This is seen when “regional population of 10 million were dumping over a billion gallons of raw sewage into the waters, reducing the oxygen content” in some areas down to 0%. People understand that air pollution is doing a similar thing by reducing the oxygen levels in the air. Because this affects the human population directly, people realize how this is a problem. However, marine life needs oxygen as well. Let’s say that people are ignorant about this. However, I’m pretty sure that those who work in high end companies know the dangers of this but this doesn’t stop petroleum refineries ad chemical plants from discharging their wastes into the water. Along with endangering marine life, I was very surprised that companies such as GE would endanger the life of humans by polluting waterways with PCBs. The PCBs “accumulate in the fatty tissue of the fish and eventually find their way into the human diet” (88). PCBs have multiple negative effects ranging from respiratory problems, reproductive problems to cancer. The most that the government can do to fix this problem is make laws and punish those who break the laws but “government regulation alone cannot remedy conditions unless public sentiments is ready to demand a strict enforcement of the necessary laws” (87) and follow those implemented laws.
