Modern man has created thousands of new chemicals, vastly improving our standard of living. But we ve dumped some very dangerous ones, as Japan s Minamata Bay community found, to its horror. Bureaucrats just can t handle such problems. Al Gore wrote that only advanced science, and a free and prosperous society, can tackle ecological problems. Causes Each society s character has an important impact on the ecology.
Racism causes eco-troubles as well.
National and race hatreds foster artificial divisions of the land and seas. Wars cause an awful mess, with the land itself among the trampled victims. Saddam Hussein s destruction of Kuwait s oil wells was only the most egregious example. Such divisions hamper effective solutions, as with boundary-crossing rivers. America s polluted maquilladora border factories are another example.