Writing environmental ruin, or how to write an obituary for an embattled planet.

[NNadir]

Until recently, Princeton University junior Anne Merrill wasn't aware of how time and distance can dampen a person's awareness of the pervasiveness and the toxic endurance of environmental degradation.

As someone who is well-read on environmental topics and active in environmental clubs on campus, Merrill, a comparative literature major, was shocked upon enrolling in the course, "The Literature of Environmental Disaster," to learn about environmental crises of which she'd never heard or realized the scale.

Decades of rapacious oil drilling in the distant Niger River delta that has laid waste to the environment and decimated local cultures with corruption, violence and pollution. A chemical leak in Bhopal, India, in 1984 — long before Merrill was born — caused by an American company's negligence that killed thousands and continues to sicken local populations more than a quarter-century later.

"Before this course, I would have told you that my knowledge of environmental issues was quite broad and, in some areas, deep," Merrill said. "I was unprepared for the number of significant environmental disasters I didn't know of, or had glossed over as having occurred long ago or far away."

It was not news reports of people suffering, or scientific studies on residual pollutants or cancer clusters that brought these events to life for Merrill. It was literature...

Writing environmental ruin, or how to write an obituary for an embattled planet

We need our young people, our best and brightest, to restore what is being lost.

[bananas]

1. Not surprised at all

considering how much nonsense and misinformation gets posted here by people who consider themselves to have broad and deep knowledge of environmental issues.

[NNadir]

3. I agree. There is a lot of nonsense published here by people who have never opene...

...a science book in their lives, and yet feel qualified to make statements on subjects they know nothing about.

My favorite example of this sort, are people who whine endlessly about Fukushima, as if it were the worst energy disaster of all time.

In doing this, they trivialize climate change, and of course, the seven million people who die each year from air pollution.

They are very, very, very, very stupid, and to my mind, dangerous people.

They simply wander around the internet picking up dogmatic cant, without realizing in their tiny little minds, that the core issues of the energy and the environment are very much tied up with scientific and engineering knowledge.

[bananas]

2. Good article, worth reading. nt