Human-caused water pollution has become a major, life-threatening problem for humans and other living species all over the earth. We need to be cleaning it up.
Although we have a tendency to blame major polluters for being callous and greedy, until citizens started taking notice and talking about it, most of our polluting was actually unconscious. Indeed, we have gone in the last several years from dumping unthinkingly, to a growing awareness and a degree of alarm, to recently making changes as soon as we see how.
Pollution Solution Key: Change in Attitude:
Any problem caused by humans can be cleared up by humans and that includes water pollution. Instead of being discouraged at the amount of trash and/or contamination there is to clean up, we can use the promise of legal and voluntary prevention (including fines) as motivation to clean up now, knowing that others are working on the prevention side.
In the process, keeping each other and the public well informed is key. Just as Wikileaks is causing a scramble in governments worldwide to clean up their acts, so publicizing information about polluters has caused many of them to start scrambling. This will increase as the public begins more and more to link pollution together with irresponsibility. Here is an analogy that all parents can identify with.
Water Pollution Facts:
This is what results when children who grow up irresponsibly become adults:
- Even the 40% lakes, rivers, and streams are classified unsafe for fishing or swimming, per the Environmental Protection Agency.
- Cleaning up the 300,000 existing contaminated groundwater sites could cost $1 trillion and take over 30 years, per the US National Research Council . . . that is if pollution stops meantime.
- Per the EPA, eliminating pollution from agriculture could save over $15 billion in the construction of advanced water treatment facilities.
- Rather than clean up after agribusiness, German water utilities are saving money by paying farmers to switch to organic farming.
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