We are obsessed with pollution these days. It鈥檚 toxins in the water here, CFCs there. Barely a day goes by without some new story showing unacceptable levels of contaminants in the food chain or the seas.
But back in the 1960s 快猫短视频 was more relaxed about chemical interventions. Hear 鈥淒DT鈥� now and the negative effects on humans and the food chain immediately spring to mind. But in 1960 we had nothing but praise for Nobel prizewinner Paul M眉ller, inventor of the insecticide . We quoted none less than Winston Churchill lauding 鈥渢he excellent DDT powder鈥� which has been found to achieve astonishing results鈥�. How times change.
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Two decades later our outlook was more gloomy. Considering the industrial pollution described in John Elkington鈥檚 book The Ecology of Tomorrow鈥檚 World, our reviewer lamented, 鈥淓ven within responsible organisations there are areas that seem beyond the controls of their principals鈥︹�� 鈥淚s industry necessarily rapacious or are environmentalists necessarily Luddite?鈥� . It probably depends on one鈥檚 politics.
And the environment is certainly a political minefield. Indeed, it was politicians who came up with the idea of trading emissions, allowing big polluters to buy capacity from smaller ones. In 2001 we questioned the wisdom of this strategy (10 November 2001). Researchers in Texas had found that the location of the polluter mattered. 鈥淔or example,鈥� we wrote, 鈥淚f power plants near urban areas buy credits to belch out nitrogen oxides, then smog there can rise to levels鈥� that would swamp the same amount of pollution produced in the area from which the credit was bought. 鈥淕et the location wrong and some kinds of pollution worsen,鈥� we warned. At least with DDT you knew what you were getting.
Image information: In 1948, it was ok to spray DDT (Toronto Star Archives/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
