76-12-B4
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Environment[edit]
Transcript[edit]Everyone knows that capitalism is responsible for scarring the earth, polluting the air and water and squandering nature's bounty... or is it? I'll be right back. Virtually every one of us is an environmentalist at heart, therefore we're all preconditioned to accept the idea that men in search of profit have torn up the hills, scraped the earth bare, destroyed the forest and dumped their waste in the nation's streams and lakes. The motive, of course, pure greed. Certainly there's evidence that in the past when our country seemed limitless in its expanse and capable of burying the wounds inflicted by puny humans. There was too little regard for nature and it was government that first sounded the alarm. President Teddy Roosevelt, an outdoorsman himself led the charge. Of course, there were also far-sighted individuals who'd been crying out against such things as hydraulic mining for gold, a method that ripped into hillsides and choked rivers and streams with gravel. They raised a cry against the early lumber barons who cut down the trees and moved on with no thought of replanting. But today, so much progress has been made. The lumber industry is virtually on a sustained yield basis, planting as many trees as are harvested. Strip miners replace the top soil, and stringent controls limit air and water pollution by industry. Now it seems that we the people are the despoilers through our own government agencies. The biggest polluter of San Francisco bay is the city sewer system. In New York City, it is the dumping of garbage in the Atlantic Ocean that threatens the coast with a tidal wave of toxic sludge. And for a time the nearest stream or body of water was automatically the city sewer system. But we are doing something about it. The present-day doom criers notwithstanding, we can all feel pretty good about what has been accomplished here in the United States at both the private and government level. In fact, we may be troubled now and then by protective overkill. For example, only a few years ago the governor of a state fronting on one of the great lakes announced he was going to halt any industrial thermal pollution that changed the lake's temperature by more than one degree. By that he meant no plant could turn clean but hot water into the lake. This would have meant millions of dollars in cooling towers and equipment, yet that particular lake undergoes a temperature change of about 40 degrees every year between winter and summer. But to make us a little proud and optimistic, hear the story of a Soviet trawler captain who defected three years ago and sailed his ship into a Swedish port. He has described the fishing operation of those Russian trawlers that seem to be off every coast in every ocean. They use such fine mesh nets he says that they catch half-grown fish of every kind. The result being that much of the catch rots on board. If the refrigerator vessels can't take what they have, the surplus is thrown overboard polluting the spawning grounds with rotten fish. If they sail into port with their catch and the port facilities can't handle their haul, it is dumped on shore to decay and taken inland later to be burned. The refugee captain estimated no more than one third of the catch ever reaches the consumer as food. That ties in with other information about Soviet agriculture, their need for food imports is not alone the result of drought, crop failure or just plain inefficiency and farming, like the fish, much of their agricultural output rots in the field or spoils in storage. I just thought you'd like to know that now that spring is here. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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