The Earth is equipped to handle some degree of pollution and use of its resources. After all, animals eat plants and use nature as a giant restroom. The real problem lies in the rate at which the environment can recover as compared to the rate at which it is used and damaged. This is why high-density cities are such hubs of environmental disaster. The speed with which industry, agriculture, and waste disposal from everyday life makes a place unlivable is staggering.
The situation in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro is an excellent example of the problems caused by high-density cities. The first challenge that jumped out to me was how many different factors contribute to pollution. Underground gas storage tanks leak into ground water, which finds its way to the river. Rain passes over oils, pesticides, and salts before flowing into the water. Garbage is dumped directly into the Rio de Janeiro and sewage is flushed into it as well. Cities spring up around bodies of water because of their usefulness for trade, agriculture, and recreation. That is why I was so surprised that there are visible chunks of fecal matter floating in the river.
At first it seems that this is a critical time for the government to step in. With the Olympics and the World Cup both coming to Brazil there is a lot of pressure to clean up. Perhaps all it takes to prioritize the environment is to know that the rest of the world is watching. Maybe an international environmental organization can be set up in which countries apply for grants to decrease pollution. The grants would be allotted based on the validity of the proposed plans and the strides each country has already taken towards the goals. This would take the same competitive spirit that an international spectator sport brings, in this case Soccer or the Olympics, and bring environmental issues to the main stage.
However, even the government may not have enough sway to reverse the damage already done in Brazil. So long as the high-density city pollutes at the rate it does, there is a huge barrier to improvement. It takes societal change as well. Unfortunately, as long as there are two entities with the power to do something, the government and the public, they are more likely to point the finger at each other than take initiative themselves.
This problem translates seamlessly to other high-density cities. 1976, with the passage of RCRA, marked the first year in which the federal government began to prioritize proper waste disposal and environmental protection. But even this morphology in governmental policy was hard pressed to break the inertia of pure capitalistic motivation. The government told GE to clean up PCBs in 1976. GE agreed, but only 32 years later. This is 32 years of bioaccumulation and 32 years with an extremely poisonous, not swimmable, and unfishable river. Public consciousness and action could have pressured GE much more effectively than a drawn out law suit. Companies will always react to supply and demand, as is their nature. If society can have an ideological shift, like the kind RCRA represented for the government, and allow environmental issues to affect their demand for products and services corporations will, literally, clean up their act. Unfortunately, with such an integrated global economy, this initiative would have to be taken up simultaneously by people everywhere.
The temporary solutions are worrisome as well. GE is burying the polluted sludge in Texas in huge clay pits. I cannot imagine that this is infallible. Earthquakes are not unheard of there. One small leak can have repercussions over a long time. This solution has the detached quality of shooting waste into the sun but not the permanence of it. Out of sight and out of mind is not an adequate approach to waste management. It is cheap though, and that may be enough to enthrall society until it is too late.
