majka (11/01/82)
Our recent awareness of the magnitude of the ground water pollution problem serves well to bring to light the concequences of our environmental ignorance as an industrial society. In a few years of dumping wastes, we have done damage that will require tens of thousands of years for natural processes to repair. Thank you, Brian Rich, for bringing this up. It is sad but true that the "ecological awareness" trip has lost its force. More unfortunate is the fact that it hardly had a chance to make anyone aware of ecology. Mention any kind of pollution to most people, and their concern is not for the ecology, but for themselves. Everyone worrys about the accumulation of toxins, carcinogens, and the like, in their own bodies. Yet the most horrible effects of pollution are environmental. What will ground water (sea water, atmospheric) contamination do to the environment? We only dimly understand the ecology of the earth. We have almost no idea about the larger ecological implications of the disturbances we are everywhere introducing into the environment. Even without cancer, sickness or disease, life on a poisoned earth would be impossible. Marc Majka UBC Lab. for Computational Vision decvax!microsoft!uw-beaver!ubc-vision!majka