People are willing to accept a load of unpleasant things in their lives. As a matter of course, they have to—at least, that’s what they figure. Because what good does it do to try to change when you can’t see a better alternative anyway? Why waste the effort? Resigning yourself to unpleasant “truths” gives you a degree of peace with yourself and the world. It lets you relinquish your power and responsibility and takes all the extra work required to change these “truths” off your hands.
So why are people willing to accept toxic waste as a permanent, growing feature of the Earth? Because they don’t see the current alternatives as feasible. Properly disposing of certain types of waste, such as PCBs, is too expensive. It makes much more sense to just wrap them up in cheap plastic and send them off to Texas. (Hey, look! The people in Texas even want this poison—it creates jobs! Even better!)
Many people swallow and repeat these arguments without bothering to ask whoever is in charge, “If the bottom line is so important, why not take a paycut? Why do you need three houses and a yacht to maintain in the first place? Why not honor a commitment to corporate responsibility—to all people, not just to your stockholders? Why not practice sustainability in your own life as well as in your business practice? And, if you knew from the start that you wouldn’t have the means to follow through with the consequences properly, why did you even begin? Do you believe that things simply can’t change? Do you have that little respect for human ingenuity, not to mention human life and dignity?”
I’m not a scientist, nor am I a financial advisor. I can’t calculate whether doing the morally right thing would lead a company to bankruptcy. It could; it might, or it might not. (Certain organic collectives seem to be growing, if only because some people can afford what’s trendy.) What I want to know is this: how long can this emphasis on cost-effectiveness continue? The Earth is finite. Resources will only become scarcer and more expensive as time goes on. Wouldn’t it be better—and more cost-effective in the long run—to invest in technologies that we’ll be able to keep counting on, as soon as possible?
Finally, the idea of a space dump sounds highly unlikely, as that would require huge amounts of fuel to transport tons and tons of garbage above the Earth’s atmosphere. Even then, it would be stuck in our orbit, because the fuel required to send it outside of the Earth’s gravitational pull would be too costly. If something went wrong, toxins could wind up free-falling through the atmosphere, carried by winds to who knows where. Does any entity have the right to begin a program that could potentially poison innocent people in other parts of the world? And even if a space-rubbish program were “proven” safe, who would control it? Who would it serve? Would all people in the world have equal, affordable access to it? If not, then to what degree would it help?
So what do people reveal when they make, and then defend, decisions like General Electric’s? Dumping PCBs into a river, beginning cleanup decades and a government mandate later, and then sending the waste to a far, far land instead of disposing of it properly? It shows that the people deciding care about money—more than they care about other people, more than they care about other fragile forms of life. Whatever other good comes is wonderful, but whatever bad comes from it simply must be borne, because it doesn’t make financial sense to do things any other way. Money is the main factor in these decisions. With short-term profits foremost in mind, it would be utterly ridiculous to invest in the technologies required for proper disposal at this point. How long can this go on? Again, the Earth is finite. What will it take for people to realize that caring for their home and co-inhabitants are more important than “the bottom line”, which translates to having a few temporary comforts for themselves?
