And we have used the crap out of it. We have traveled 10,000 years, doing what we do best---looking at things and coming up with new ways to use them and new things we could make to use and new things to want if we could figure out how to make them.
One of the first things we made---after our very first weapon, was fire---not an invention as such, but a very valuable discovery capable of helping us with the first law of thermodynamics, also known as Law of Conservation of Energy, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; energy can only be transferred or changed from one form to another.
We have found many ways to change energy in the last 10,000 years. And while some of the newer ones have little by-products, a lot of the older ones have a decidedly large impact on whatever they are around.
Soot---a black, carbonaceous substance produced during incomplete combustion of coal, wood, oil, etc., rising in fine particles and adhering to the sides of the chimney or pipe conveying the smoke: also conveyed in the atmosphere to other locations. verb (used with object) 2. to mark, cover, or treat with soot.
My parents knew soot, as did their parents and their parents,parents,parents. Medieval knights knew soot and ancient Greeks knew soot and cavemen knew soot.
It was coating the inside of my chimney and coated London in 1952. Soot used to be ubiquitous. Rock and brick buildings used to look quite grim and gray, as did the skies of cities with large populations in areas that heated and cooked with coal, peat, and wood fires.
As we became more ingenious, we developed ways to do more than just heat and cook, and created engines and factories that not only used wood and soot, but also that burned petroleum products to give those new machines their power. Fifty years after the automobile, that rich man's play-toy and newest pride-maker, became the standard method of travel, instead of just soot, we were facing a black/gray fog of chemicals that made skies hard to see far and eyes burn and noses wrinkle in distaste.
We creative and amazing humans had created smog.
Smog is a kind of air pollution, originally named for the mixture of smoke and fog in the air.
Classic smog results from large amounts of coal burning in an area and is caused by a mixture of smoke and sulfur dioxide.In the 1950s a new type of smog, known as Photochemical Smog, was first described.
Smog is a problem in a number of cities and continues to harm human health.
Ground-level ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide are especially harmful for senior citizens, children, and people with heart and lung conditions such as emphysema, bronchitis, and asthma.
Hospital admissions and respiratory deaths often increase during periods when ozone levels are high.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/smog.htm
When I came home from grade school talking about smog, my parents had never heard of it. But as a truck driver, my father had seen it. It's why we went to the mountains or forests on vacation. It's why I was 50 the first time I saw Chicago.
Chicago's sky looked pretty good in 2007. Like something had gotten rid of all that smog I heard about when I was a child. (back then)>>>>><<<<<now) Of course, those beautiful sunrises and sunsets are related to particles in the air, but the air is no longer so thick that light can't pass.
The worst of them, and last on the table at our poisonous party, made possible by our big brains and tendency to turn every bit of new and amazing information into a weapon first and a money-maker next was radioactive fallout--Fallout is the radioactive particles that fall to earth as a result of a nuclear explosion. It consists of weapon debris, fission products, and, in the case of a ground burst, radiated soil.
It was another thing I heard about in school. We did a few drills, and talked about going into fallout shelters and even heard the sirens that were supposed to tell us it was time to do that.
It was terrifying.
Fallout, as in "fallout shelters". Our neighbor had a fallout shelter. It always had water puddled in the bottom, and was only used for tornado warnings, but we all knew about "fallout".
Sort of knew. Kind of knew. Thought we knew.
We had no clue what nuclear fallout actually meant--we just thought someone in a WWII bomber plane was going to drop something on us. The idea that the very air was about to become a weapon was so far beyond our little minds.......
The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually knew. Or rather, the people that were not in Hiroshima and Nagasaki until after the bomb, knew.
https://www.nap.edu/read/11282/chapter/
The one thing all three of these have in common is human's caused them. (ok, a lightning-caused forest fire was not human caused, but soot is much more common that that.) So, we humans caused them. They are bad for us in the long, and even short run. And because their poisonous nature is related to our livelihood, our finances, and our sense of power, we forgive them far too often--forgive them to the point we avoid trading them for things that are less harmful.
We act like clean energy is a nasty word. But windmills (as far back as 1000 b.c.e. in Persia) and water mills (40 AD Rome) used to power various common machines such as well pumps and grain grinding mills. But if the source was there and the machine could be configured, other things as well.
And things like the Clean Air Act of 1970, cleared the air above such monstrously smoggy cities as Los Angeles and New York City. The EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, was born about the same time. Since the birth of the industrial age and the age of cars and the population of the world in 1900 being only 1.6 to it's current 6 billion, our human ability to poison ourselves and every thing around us, has grown significantly.
http://www.worldhistorysite.com/population.html
So now that we are officially an Oligarchy, owned and run by those bigger than life corporations that not only have the rights we fought to gain for ourselves but also get the lion's share of governmental financial and legal support, all those agencies that were born to protect our air, water, and soil are going away. All those laws aimed at maintaining our right to live in a world with breathable air, potable water and fertile soil are ending, as they interfere with the ability of big business to make a profit for their shareholders and bonuses for their C-suite power-mongers.
And---a quarter of us can't see we are in danger. They keep thinking that the only problem is immigrants coming to steal their jobs and rape their women. They believe that someone made those businesses move their factories to places that didn't have a minimum wage. They believe that their little town's patron saint of endowments is the only thing standing between them and all the horrors of the world. Not once asking---how did that family come to own everything worth owning in this place?
The factories complain about having to pay people minimum wage and people that can barely find a place to rent or buy food to feed their family decide that the minimum wage is the enemy. While across town, the wealthy factory owners, CEOs and those that consider golfing with their banker to actually be their work, throw out enough food at every meal to feed a family of four--good food, organic, we aren't talking about boxes of bacon that smells of antibiotics and iceberg lettuce and bread so infused with preservatives that a loaf never goes bad.
The business owners complain about having to meet standards for dumping their by-products into the water, air and soil, and complain about the cost. And the people living by those factories, drinking from the water supply closest to those factories, building schools and playgrounds for their children on the land nearest the factories, believe that is why they are struggling. If the owners weren't trying to meet silly standards, they would pay them more.
But before there were standards, they didn't pay more.
Being rich is not about sharing.
Being rich is about winning.
And those people working in those factories and business are so far away from the people owning the businesses, the factories, the corporations, as to be seen as less than human.
We complain about hoarders, viewing them as mentally ill.
We complain about criminals, viewing them as a pox on the arse of society.
But how different from those 2 groups are those that can never have enough money and power;
how different, with their tax-shelters and efforts to avoid following rules about pollution and methods to avoid paying those that work for them a living wage, are they really?
Sounds like a hoarder.
Sounds like a criminal.
We have the knowledge to keep from poisoning the earth.
We have the ability to keep from poisoning the earth.
What are we waiting for?
(and no, the rich will not get on this bandwagon until they can't buy a place where their own lungs don't hurt when they breathe---maybe not even then)
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