Newspaper Page Text
Wednesday, May 14, 1969 Griffin Daily New*
The Dirty Animal — Man
He Has Managed To Make His Rivers Rotten
By JOSEPH L. MYLER
DPI Senior Editor
WASLINGTO (UPI) — Man
is poisoning his world.
He has been labelled, with
strong justification, the dirty
animal.
He has managed to make his
rivers rotten. He has trans
formed green pastures into
deserts. He has clogged the air
with chemicals which menace
health and dust which Is
changing the climate. He is a
menace to himself and other
species.
He has turned large areas of
his world into junk heaps, piled
high or layered deep with
Indestructible cans or plastic
containers. Americans alone
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I POSS' HOUSEHOLD CLEANER I
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124 Oz. Can 49c 28 Oz. Bottle 59c
I BLUE PLATE I
MAYONNAISE 39c
I NABISCO PREMIUM I
I Crisco OIL •• -79 c SALTINES ■ 35c
I THOMAS SLICED ■■ Mfe C
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BACON UU
I CHUCK LEAN MEATY BRISKET FRESH PORK
ROAST Stew Beef LIVER
I lb s9c 4us.sl®® lb 25c
M I
discard more than a billion tons
of solid waste a year and the
. total Is growing.
Face the Problem
i Man Is beginning to face up to
’ the problem, but only slowly
and against great obstacles
i because of government and
• Industrial considerations.
> Unless he is willing to spend
| billions upon billions to undo
what he has done—and perhaps
I even change some of his
ways—he really may be gasping
; for breath in a few decades.
In the developing nations,
' nearly a billion people get their
! water from unsanitary sources
j and half of them get sick every
j year as a result. Even in the
; United States, half the people
16
depend on water supplies which
don’t meet federal standards or
are of unknown quality.
Rivers of so-called developed
nations have been turned into
sewers of civilization to get rid
of unwanted Industrial wastes.
The oceans are being contamin
ated with agricultural poisons
which drain into streams and
are carried away to the seas.
By exhausting warm water
from our power cooling plants
Into the ocean, we are
threatening marine life. All
along we have drained the
priceless topsoil of our fields
into silting rivers. We have
denuded many of our forests.
Dangerous Fumes
Millions of workers are
exposed to potentially dange
rous concentrations of dust,
fumes, gases and vapors. No
one knows what the noise
generated by modern machines
and cities is doing to man’s
nervous system.
As J. George Harrar of the
Rockefeller Foundation has
said, “Man himself is ’’•e
greatest threat to his environ
ment. . .we have now success
fully begun to contaminate what
we have not yet destroyed.’’
None of this happened over
night.
Once the oceans were thought
to be endless, the land infinite
and the atmosphere limitless.
Now man’s survival is known to
depend on how he husbands a
• relatively thin layer of soil,
;, water and air tightly wrapped
3 around our planet’s surface.
» Nature with its wind and
s changes has been alerting the
s environment for millions of
years. But the possibility that
> one species might make the
s i world uninhabitable did not
? arise until 8,000 years ago when
- the hunter, who simply ranges
- the land in search of food,
t evolved into the farmer who
plowed and uprooted It.
Next came the city and then
! the industrial society, which
t multiplied the threat many
» times over.
Consider what man has done
j to one indispensable element of
i our biosphere—water.
Water in a sense is the most
precious stuff on this planet.
Destroy Lakes
Yet we waste it, we pol.-.e it,
we threaten the existence of
unreplacable underground re
serves which took nature
thousands of years to establish,
we destroy the beauty and the
life of once sparkling streams
and deep blue lakes.
What is so precious about
water—that cheap fluid most of
us in this country can get in
any amount just by turning a
tapz
Throughout human history
water has been the great
limiter. No civilation has ever
risen without a plenitude of
water. When water runs out, or
becomes unusable, civilizations
die.
Men have killed each other
for water, whether at some
isolated spring in the 19th
century American west or in
ancient Mesopotamia where
human beings warred for
control of the Tigris and
Euphrates.
Water is one of the reasons
for today's bloody rivalry
between the Israelis and the
Arabs.
The high standard of living in
the United States and other
affluent nations of the modern
world depends on fresh water
lots of it.
Americans use about 310
billion gallons of water a day on
the average for public supplies,
commerce and Industry, irriga
tion. and rural domestic and
livestock needs. On a per capita
basis, this is 1,600 gallons a day.
Underground Sources
Os the annually renewable
w’ater supplies available to the
United States, about 1.2 trillion
gallons a day enter the
streamflow from surface and
underground sources.
This amount, 1.2 trillion
gallons a day, constitutes the
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BRITISH NOT HAPPY OVER NEW QUEEN ELIZABETH — British reaction to the new luxury
liner Queen Elisabeth 11, heading for a triumphant maiden docking at New York, is typ
ically British—too gaudy and flamboyant. At the right Is one of the lounges on the linerv
30 Killed In Rioting
Between Chinese, Malays
BY MAX VANZI
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
1 (UPl»—More han 3.000 police
j and troops with submachine
guns today enforced a curfew
! ordered to halt rioting between
j Malays and Chinese that killed
■ more than 30 persons and left
entire block aflame.
Prime Minister Tengku Abdul
' Rahman went on television with
i tears in his eyes to declare a
! state of siege and to appeal for
order. He blamed opponents of
j state of siege and to appeal for [
, his ruling Alliance party for!
I whipping up emotions between!
i the native Malays and the j
! migrant Chinese.
The Chinese wing of Rah-1
I man’s party said it was
> withdrawing its members as
i nominees for appointment in
the government Rahman is
i farming as result of Saturday’s
1 election victory.
Rahman, a Malay, has tried
!to team Malays, Chinese and
I Indians In his cabinet in an
1 attempt for harmony. Still
| strife has erupted. Malays
contend Chinese have all the
wealth. The Chinese claim
I Malays have all the political
I power and are lazy.
Gangs of Malays and Chinese
I battled with clubs, stones and
I steel bars Tuesday night and
I set fire to entire blocks of
I homes.
Kuala Lumpur’s streets, nor-
I mally Asia’s cleanest, were
I littered with scores of over
| turned cars and trucks, street
I signs, broken bottles, clubs and
I steel bars. Smoke curled
I hundreds of feet into the sky
| from burning buildings.
nation’s ultimate water re-1
source—for homes, industry, j
irrigation, recreation.
Properly managed, it can be ,
used and reused before release
to the oceans. Only a tiny
amount is “consumed’’ in the
sense that it is converted into
other forms, such as chemical
products, or removed as a
resource by being turned into
vapor.
So the United States is water
rich. With all that magnificent!
streamflow it can never become
thirsty. Or can it?
For one thing, the figures are:
all in averages. The blessing of
fresh water from the sky
ranges from less than an inch a
year in some parched regions of
the southwest to more than 200
inches in the Pacific Northwest
and parts of Hawaii.
For another, populations and
the demand for water are rising
faster than man’s means for
making his water resources'
available wherever needed for
human use.
The world population is;
expected to double to nearly 7
billion by 2000. Says Dr.
Raymond L. Nace, research
hydrologist of the U.S. geologi
cal survey:
“The problem is not whether
water supplies are running out,
but whether people are outrun
ning the supplies. Water sup
plies have finite limits, but the
demands of people on the
supplies have no known limit.”
Global Problems
Unless he gives up piecemeal,
temporary solutions to local
water problems and concerns
himself with the long-term
global problems, man will be in
trouble. For that matter, he
already is.
Take pollution. To list the
specific pollutants which man
dumps into his water supply
would take many pages.
They range from raw sewage
to chemical fertilizers and
UPI correspondent Hari Su-!
bramanian said firemen were
working to put out fires all over i
this city of 600,000 persons. One ’
block of 12 homes was entirely
burned out.
The battling groups fought
from behind overturned auto
barricades in many instances,
Subramanian said. He said a
mob of 200 persons beat to
death a woman in one Kuala
Lumpur suburb and two miles
away, another crowd attacked
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HOSIERY BILLBOARD?—No, It’s the Interior of the base of a
distilling tower awaiting installation at the Lahe Charles,
La., PPG Industries chemical plant
I animal dung, from acids and
j poisons generated by industry to
| silts and salts drained from
| strip mines, city streets and
i farmlands, from crankcase oils
' and detergents to disease
carrying bacteria, from her
’ bicides and pesticides to ra
! dioactive contaminants from
mines and atomic plants.
Congress has enacted laws to
control water pollution and is
j studying new ones. But the
I pollutant load is steadily
! increasing, and some of the
' problems involved seem almost
| too difficult to be solved by
legislation alone.
Listen again to Nace of the
I geological survey:
“Out of its total potentially
u controllable liquid assets the
. United States uses 95 per cent
; chiefly as a conveyor belt on
H which to send waste products
out to sea.
J “The ma.ir use of free
J running water in industrial
, nations is not industry, as
I published statistics seem to
' show, but waste disposal. Our
J river are open sewers.”
Destroy Fish
These pollutants also are
killing some of our lakes.
Nutrients from wastes or farm
fertilizers have created
blooms” which result in deple
tion of oxygen in the water,
destroy fish, and set the stage
for ultimate transformation of a
lake into a marsh and
eventually a meadow.
Lake Erie may already be
doomed by this cycle. Lake
Michigan is in danger.
According to the recent report
of the Marine Science Commis
sion. man has creaged a
"devil’s brew of pollution”
which constitutes “a growing
national disgrace.”
How serious is all this in the
world scheme? Dr. Lamont C.
Cole of Cornell University has
warned that mankind seems
bent upon his own extinction.
’ and killed a mother and her
! child.
Rahman’s party barely got
1 enough votes to stay in office
last week. It was the biggest
setback for him since Malay
sia’s independence from Britain
in 1957.
Curfews were in force with a
shoot-to-kill order for violators
in Kuala Lumpur and through
out Selangor State, Penang
State 200 miles to the north and
in half of neighboring Perak
State.