skipperdude wrote:The stuff is in the water anyway. anti fouling paint. ablative.Dope smoking, bunny hugging, tree kissing liberals.
I guess it depends on who you are and what's important to you.* Some of the strongest supporters of the movments to clean up the waters in Puget Sound are the commercial fishermen, particularly the crab and shellfish folks. Their living depends on having clean water with no pollutants.* Even the commercial salmon fishermen have become very vocal about the need to clean up streams and modify logging practices to keep the streams and rivers from silting up, and the movements to protect eelgrass beds and other marshland beds that provide shelter and food to salmon fingerlings.
The other day there was a story in the paper about how carbon dioxide in the air gets absorbed into the ocean water and raises the acidity level.* The danger is that as the acidity level goes up, it can attack and weaken the shells of shellfish.* Guess who's very concerned about this?* The commercial shellfish folks.* The article had charts showing the increase of water acidity in Puget Sound and in the open ocean where it also can have negative effects.
Everything's connected.* Nothings cut and dried or black and white.* If you think something like the scrapings and paint spills around a tidal grid or boat yard is an isolated issue with minimal consequences that mainly inconveniences you, think again.* Multiply your contribution to pollutants in the water by, what, milions, and the affect is not so small.** Think about the people whose livlihood depends on what's trying to live in the water, and your impact is not so small.
You make cookies for a living, right?* (I think that's you but if I'm confusing you with someone else, sorry.)* You use a lot of flour I assume.* How about I put up a smelting operation near the farms that grow the wheat that makes your flour and pretty soon the wheat starts showing high contents of heavy metal?* And what if this practice becomes so widespread that just about any flour you buy has a higher level of heavy metals in it?* Are you going to care?* I just made this example up--- I have no idea if heavy metals would show up in wheat or not, but you get the idea.
Our self-centered society has reached the point where the only thing that matters is how something affecte ME.* If I'm inconvenienced, then the reason is inevitably due to dope smoking, bunny hugging, tree kissing liberals.
I'm not a tree hugger.* In fact I'm a big fan of the guys that cut them down and saw them up for a living.* But I've been around long enough to have realized that there are multiple sides to every issue and that I may have to be slightly inconvenienced to ensure that some other guy can continue to make a living.* If shutting the tidal grids down in Puget Sound helps the shellfish farmers thrive, they are more likely to be able to afford to take that vacation to Hawaii or Europe which means they'll fly on an airline which will help that airline prosper which will enable them to buy new planes when they need them which will help keep me employed.* Like I said, everything's connected.
If you want to walk up to a commercial fisherman and tell him that he's a dope smoking, bunny hugging, tree kissing liberal be my guest.* But based on the ones I've met here and in the lobster industry in Maine and the Canadian maritimes you might want to make sure there's a ladder leading from the water he's going to kick your ass into back up onto the pier
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-- Edited by Marin on Thursday 15th of July 2010 12:12:10 PM