Analysis of Human Responses to Pollution Effects

. . .It was the threat of disease, finally, that made garbage removal at least partially a public responsibility in Europe and the United States. One obstacle these days to a calm and measured approach to garbage problems is a collective memory restricted to the human lifespan of about seventy-five years. It is difficult for anyone alive now to appreciate how appalling, as recently as a century ago, were the conditions of daily life in all of the cities of the Western world, even in the wealthier parts of town. “For thousands of years,” Lewis Mumford wrote in The City in History, “city dwellers put up with defective, often quite vile, sanitary arrangements, wallowing in rubbish and filth they certainly had the power to remove.” The stupefying level of wrack [rubbish] and rejectamenta [refuse] in one’s immediate vicinity that was accepted as normal from prehistory through the Enlightenment was raised horribly by the Industrial Revolution, which drew millions of people into already congested cities and at the same time increased the volume of consumer goods—future throwaways—by many orders of magnitude. . . .

. . . When cholera* returned to Europe in 1865, it found some cities less hospitable than in previous visits. London, in particular, had moved forward. England’s largest city had worked at improving sewer systems, cleaning up drinking water supplies, and collecting and disposing of refuse. 
The efforts paid off. When cholera reached the city’s shores, a few months after striking western Europe, it no longer leaked from the Thames into wells and other water supplies. The Thames itself was looking and smelling cleaner than it had for generations. Although the epidemic still killed several thousand people during its stay in London, its spread was limited once sources of contamination were discovered. . . .

Winding 1,560 miles across northern India, from the Himalaya Mountains to the Indian Ocean, the Ganges River is not a sacred place: it is a sacred entity [thing]. Known as  Ganga Ma—Mother Ganges—the river is revered as a goddess whose purity cleanses the sins of the faithful and aids the dead on their path toward heaven. But while her spiritual purity has remained unchallenged for millennia, her physical purity has deteriorated as India’s booming population imposes an ever-growing burden upon her. The river is now sick [2004] with the pollution of human and industrial waste, and water-borne illness is a terrible factor of Indian life. But the threat posed by this pollution isn’t just a matter of health—it’s a matter of faith. Veer Bhadra Mishra, a Hindu priest and civil engineer who has worked for decades to combat pollution in the Ganges, describes the importance of protecting this sacred river: “There is a saying that the Ganges grants us salvation. This culture will end if the people stop going to the river, and if the culture dies the tradition dies, and the faith dies.”. . . 
In 1985, the government of India launched the Ganga Action Plan, which was devised to clean up the river in selected areas by installing sewage treatment plants and threatening fines and litigation [legal action] against industries that pollute. Almost 20 years later, the plan has been largely unsuccessful. The Western-style treatment plants simply did not meet the needs of the region. Such treatment facilities are designed for use in countries where the supply of electricity is stable, there’s no season of overwhelming monsoon rains, and the population doesn’t drink directly from the water source. Many Indians blame the plan’s failure on mismanagement, corruption and technological mistakes. A key criticism is that local communities, those most invested in the health of the river, were not included in the planning process. . . . 

Venezuela’s oil industry has crisscrossed Lake Maracaibo with about 15,000 miles of pipelines. “We say that the lake’s practically a plate of spaghetti with the quantity of pipes there,” says local historian Pedro Estrada. Unfortunately, many of the pipes are old, rusty, and leaking. In 2010, the leaky pipes released oil that washed up on Lake Maracaibo’s shores, harming fish and birds. 
Other sources of pollution are damaging the lake as well. About 500 companies dump waste into the lake’s tributaries, and the area’s inhabitants produce tons of sewage. Chemical runoff from farms also flows into the lake. Only about 20 percent of this waste, runoff, and sewage  is treated before it enters the lake. . . 

Mexico City residents once viewed the forest of smokestacks and their congested highways with pride. They saw these developments as symbols of modernization and proof of a growing economy. In recent years, however, air pollution has begun to have a serious impact on their lives. Several times during 1992, for instance, Mexico City’s ozone level climbed well over the “very dangerous” point on the official index and remained there for days. Each time  the government declared an emergency. Car use was restricted, and industries were required to cut back operations. One result of such events is that more and more people are beginning to equate the city’s factories and cars with environmental destruction. . .

As in most countries, coal, another nonrenewable energy source, is the chief source of China’s domestic energy production. Coal has traditionally been China’s main source of energy, and even in 2006, it accounted for about 70 percent of China’s energy. China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal. It is abundant in China and is cheap compared with other sources of energy. Unfortunately, coal is also the “dirtiest” energy source, as it produces carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and methane—gases that contribute to global warming, air pollution, and acid rain. Indeed, China’s abundance of coal has contributed to its notorious air pollution: 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China. Coal mines are also dangerous places for workers, especially in China, where more coal miners die each year than anywhere else in the world. 
The Chinese government has recognized the need to shift to renewable energy sources to sustain its energy growth and to minimize the environmental and health problems caused by relying on nonrenewable energy sources. Its Renewable Energy Law, which took effect on  1 January 2006, aims to ensure that 15 percent of China’s energy comes from renewable sources by 2020. Renewable energy comes from dams that harness water flow, windmills that channel energy, and solar panels that store energy from the sun. Unfortunately, wind power and solar power are still in the initial stages of development. They cost a lot to install, and they supply only a small fraction of China’s energy needs. Still, China has one of the world’s greatest wind energy potentials, a fact that the government acknowledged as it set an ambitious target of increasing wind power capacity to more than 23 times its 2005 level by the year 2020. . .