World’s Top Environmental Success Stories by Niki2

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World’s Top Environmental Success Stories

POSTED BY: NIKI2
UPDATED: Monday, October 1, 2012 06:29
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Monday, October 1, 2012 6:29 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Looking around for SOME news that isn't political, I found this (slightly) encouraging article. Considering what a doom-and-gloom person I am, I thought it only fair to post something on the other side:

Quote:
Don't Despair

It's no wonder so many environmentalists sound like downers. Forests are being wiped out at the rate of one Costa Rica-size parcel a year. Cities such as Beijing and New Delhi choke on smog. Global temperatures and tides continue an unrelenting climb.

Don't despair! Forty years after the environmental movement peaked, the world has some historic success stories that reduce pollution and save lives every day. This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Montreal Protocol, a model international agreement that reduced pollution-inflicted damage to the Earth's protective ozone layer.

Environmental issues follow certain patterns -- the questioning of science, the questioning of proposed solutions and sometimes, the quiet disappearance of the problem when collective action works. "Despite denials at the time, they all proved economically feasible and have resulted in tangible improvements for people," said David Goldston, director of the government affairs program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

13 of the world's top environmental success stories:

Ozone Hole

One of the nice things the atmosphere does is provide a layer of ozone -- molecules of three oxygen atoms -- that shield living things from ultraviolet solar radiation. Basically, it's gaseous sunblock.

In the 1970s, scientists began to suspect that manmade chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons, which were used in refrigeration, aerosol sprays and elsewhere, were breaking down the ozone layer. Not until 1985 could researchers document an expanding "hole" in the ozone layer. The public snapped to attention.

The resulting Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is "perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date," according to Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations. All 197 UN member nations agreed to legally binding standards to cut ozone-eating pollution.

The hole grows and shrinks seasonally and stands now near its record of almost 30 million square kilometers. But the problematic trend has reversed, and scientists expect ozone levels to return to pre-1980s levels by 2070.

Leaded Gasoline

Early car drivers suffered engine "knock," irregular kicks delivered when gas ignites too quickly. A General Motors chemist in 1922 found that adding a lead compound to fuel smoothed the ride.

Tetraethyl lead was good for cars but bad for living things. The compound harms child mental development and can cause nervous system and blood pressure conditions in adults. The Environmental Protection Agency started phasing out leaded gas in 1974, overcoming legal battles with refiners. A federal appeals court ruled in 1980 that the EPA could set standards "to act in the face of uncertainty."

Little-known fact: The GM chemist who came up with leaded gas also invented ozone-destroying CFCs, leaving historian J.R. McNeill to conclude that Thomas Midgley Jr. "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth history."

Acid Rain

Spruce trees killed by acid rain in Krkonose National Park in the Czech Republic.

Coal-fired power plants and other fossil-fuel combustion emit chemicals that react with water and oxygen in the air to produce nitric and sulfuric acids. These acids fall back to earth, over time changing the chemistry of lakes and forest soils, damaging trees and wearing down roads and bridges.

President George H.W. Bush campaigned to be the "environmental president," and his signature on the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 created the most important environmental law since the 1970s. The "cap and trade" program set up by the law puts limits on air pollution and allows companies to buy and sell emissions permits. The program reduced pollution faster and at a lower cost than expected, according to the EPA.

Endangered Species

Beginning Oct. 1, hunters in northwestern Wyoming will prowl for gray wolves -- their first opportunity to do so since 1974, when the U.S. Endangered Species Act protected the animal.

Gray wolves, bald eagles, grizzly bears, and Louisiana's state bird, the brown pelican, have all fought their way off the endangered list. Conserving brown pelicans' habitats began in 1903, when President Theodore Roosevelt created the country's first national wildlife refuge. The wildlife refuge system is now the world's largest, comprising more than 150 million acres of protected lands.

"The return of the wolf to the Northern Rocky Mountains is a major success story, and reflects the remarkable work of States, Tribes, and our many partners to bring this iconic species back from the brink of extinction," said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe in a statement.

Air Pollution

Los Angeles, wedged between the ocean to its west and mountains to its east, is built for air pollution. Contaminants from cars, utilities and factories pump out particles and gases that enshroud the city in smog.

California became the first state to regulate air pollution when then-Governor Ronald Reagan signed the Air Resources Act in 1967. The U.S. caught up with California three years later when another California Republican, President Richard Nixon, signed the Clean Air Act.

California maintains its role as an environmental law laboratory. This fall it will introduce a statewide cap-and-trade program to gradually reduce its climate pollution.

Poisonous Water

The Cuyahoga River, in northeastern Ohio, caught fire many times before a conflagration in June 1969 was picked up widely by national media. "Some river! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows,"Time magazine wrote.

The fire, which nearly destroyed two railroad bridges that spanned the river, fueled environmental politics and led to the landmark Clean Water Act. Today, the law governs cleanup of generations-old pollution, such as the Cuyahoga River, as well as new episodes of contamination as they happen, such as the Enbridge oil spill in Michigan.

Asbestos

The first medical article about the dangers of asbestos was published in the British Medical Journal in 1924. It led to regulations that controlled dust emissions from U.K. factories. Four decades passed before scientists confirmed just how inadequate those restrictions were.

Asbestos is actually a name for six mined substances used in manufacturing for their durability and heat resistance. Asbestos particles break away and are easily inhaled into the lungs, where they can lead to fatal diseases including lung cancer and mesothelioma. Studies in the 1960s confirmed that the risk extended from the factory floor to suburban homes, where asbestos construction materials and brake pads were ubiquitous.

Lawsuits in the 1970s revealed that corporations knew about the risks for decades and concealed them from the public. Most of the companies that mined or used asbestos have since gone bankrupt, after billions of dollars in litigation losses. Even with strict regulations now in place across much of the world, researchers say deaths from past exposures will continue well into the 21st century.

Toxic Waste

The 58th Street Landfill in the town of Hialeah near Miami. Dade County operated the landfill beginning in 1952, accepting pesticides, paints and solvents as part of what grew into a square-mile mountain of garbage. The EPA cleaned up the site and converted it into a lake for wading birds, complete with walking trails and lookout centers.

The U.S. program to clean up hazardous waste sites is known as Superfund. It was created by a 1980 law after the discovery of such catastrophic toxic waste dumps as Love Canal and Times Beach, which the EPA previously lacked the authority to clean up.

The 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants is a global attempt to mirror Superfund efforts to stop toxic dumping. The treaty, ratified by 172 countries, targets 12 of the most dangerous pesticides and industrial chemicals that kill people and degrade the environment.

Unprotected Lands

The U.S. established the world's first national park, Yellowstone, in 1872. Other countries soon followed, including the Royal National Park established in Australia in 1879, the Rocky Mountain National Park in Canada in 1885 and the Tongariro National Park in New Zealand in 1887.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, tracks the world's progress on preserving natural habitats. Today the agency represents more than 100,000 protected areas worldwide, covering one-eighth of the earth's land mass.

Open-Air Nuclear Tests

The U.S. and the Soviet Union conducted 434 open-air nuclear bomb tests from 1945 to 1963, according to data collected by the NRDC. Physicists and military engineers used the tests to study bomb types, sizes and destructive effects. Government leaders used nuclear tests as a diplomatic tool, flexing military muscle without conducting an attack.

As it became clear that nuclear fallout from the explosions was reaching civilian populations, the major world powers entered into arms-control negotiations that led to the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, an early nuclear arms-control agreement between the U.S., U.S.S.R. and the U.K. The subsequent Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which bans all nuclear explosions in all environments, was adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 1996 but hasn't been ratified by key nations including the U.S. and China.

DDT

"The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials," Rachel Carson wrote in her iconic 1962 book, Silent Spring.

To Carson, the insecticide DDT was an "elixir of death" that poisoned living things and ecosystems. Her book, which fueled the 60s environmental movement, also led to the U.S. DDT ban in the early 1970s. Public health professionals still recognize DDT as a powerful weapon for limited use against mosquito-borne malaria in developing nations.

Mountains of Garbage

Scrap metal is processed at Jewometaal Stainless Processing BV plant in Rotterdam. Recycling steel is profitable, and more steel is recycled each year in the U.S. than paper, plastic, aluminum and glass combined.

Recycling is nothing new: It's been around for about as long as humans have used tools. Industrialization and mass-production technology, however, have made it cheaper to make things -- and easier to throw them away. The 20th century invention of the modern landfill made excessive waste more respectable.

Recycling grew popular again with the environmental movement of the 1960s and '70s, and the now-ubiquitous recycling symbol -- reduce, reuse, recycle -- was born. Cities eventually began offering recycling pickups, and now many U.S. locales require it. Americans rank seventh among nations in recycling, according to National Geographic and GlobeScan's 2012 Greendex.

Mercury Emissions

Coal-burning power plants and industrial facilities emit trace amounts of mercury, which accumulate in the environment -- particularly in fish and shellfish. The FDA cautions women of childbearing age against eating swordfish, king mackerel and other fish, and it encourages limiting tuna intake.

The Obama administration issued a rule in December that sets emissions limits on mercury and other hazardous air pollutants. The Utility Air Regulatory Group, an industry coalition, has filed a legal challenge to the law.

The EPA called power plants "the largest remaining source of several toxic air pollutants" and estimates the new rule might prevent as many as 46,000 premature deaths, 540,000 child asthma attacks and 24,500 ER or hospital visits. http://www.bloomberg.com/slideshow/2012-09-18/world-s-top-environmenta
l-success-stories.html

I'm afraid none of this changes my mind that we have passed tipping point, but it's nice to think of the good things we've done to reverse the harm we do. Still, they're worth noting.

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