by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Already in the 1970s the Hippies (of the day), who had developed a link with Mother Earth, warned us about environmental pollution, about the fumes from cars, factory and power station chimneys, and also about the waste created which we were, and still are, dumping wholesale into holes in the ground. “Acid Rain” was then a topic and all the “rage” but that was and is not the only problem. Now the only talk is about carbon emissions, which obscures all the rest.
Brown carbon has become the new term for soot, which is affecting the glacier in the Himalayas and other mountain regions and causing their melt. But why not call it soot, that is to say by its real name? Why not? Simple...
Because you can trade carbon certificates nowadays, the new indulgences, thus everything has to be carbon and if it is not carbon or can be made into carbon we do not talk about it, in the hope that it might go away. If it cannot be made into carbon we also do not – at least the powers-that-be and industry – do anything about it.
Carbon certificates and carbon trading is all, it would appear, what the powers-that-be and industry are interested in. Waste reduction and the real cutting of air pollution is something to be swept under the carpet. Mind you, under that rug it is getting almost as overfull as in our landfill sites.
Britain has jut gotten a rap over the knuckles from the EU as to the missed target for air pollution clean up in London with the Mayor, Boris the Buffoon, just making light of the matter despite the fact that that very pollution being the cause of the increase in asthma, especially among children (and the elderly).
When the Con-Dem coalition regime got in they claimed that they were going to be the greenest government ever. Green with envy, maybe, or with rage – enter the Incredible Hulk – but green as far as the environment is concerned certainly not. More the opposite.
The term emissions has replaced the word pollution in the political speak vocabulary and with that they can play around. However, pollution is the problem and not just carbon emissions and even particle emissions; it is pollution of air, water and soil that we have to fight.
© 2015
