Re: Pollution <01H9KPQNMSW48XE3N4@VAX1.ACS.JMU.EDU>

[wpc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 8 Mar 94 11:31 GMT]

To B Rosser

The point about the ozone layer, overfishing etc was that these
were indifferently caused by both economic systems.
As to air pollution, one has to be cautious about saying such and
such an area has the worst air pollution in the world. The contendees
for this title vary from year to year. I have visited the forest
areas of Bohemia and the Black Forest that are supposed to be
so heavily polluted.  No doubt to people with the appropriate
biological training and local knowledge the damage is evident,
but I would not have noticed it. On the other hand, when traveling
accross Canada by train I came accross and area where the forest
vanished to be replaced by a sort of moonscape of bare rocks and
erroded gulleys. The only similar sight I had ever seen was
when passing through recently glaciated territory in high
Norwegian passes. It turned out that I was downwind of Sudbury,
whose nickel smelter was until closure the worlds largest
emitter of SO2.

I am not denying that Poland, the GDR and CSSR were copious
emitters of S02, merely that wheter and economy is capitalist or
socialist has no relevance to the ecological damage caused.

This depends upon contingent factors, population density, sulphur
contents of fuels and ores, prevailing winds etc, and also upon
there is sufficient political opposition to the pollution to cause
certain branches of the economy to be closed down.,

In Britiain we had terrible S02 pollution in the last century and in
the first 2rds of this one. It culminated in the great smogs of the
1950s in one of which 3000 Londoners died of S02 poisoning in a fortnight.
This resulted in the Clean Air Act, whose main effect was to divert coal
burning from homes and factories to powerstations with very high chimneys.
This ensured that the S02 was blown out to sea to fall on Norway instead.
But of course there was no political pressure in the UK to deal with that.

Only the establishment of the appropriate international authorities with
regulatory powers and sanctions that bight has any prospect of controlling
air pollution.

Paul Cockshott