"Pollution rife during UN environmental conference in Brazil" by Juliana Barbassa | Associated Press, June 21, 2012
RIO DE JANEIRO — The crowds streaming into Rio for a sustainable development conference may be dreaming of white-sand beaches and clear, blue waters.
If they were really interested in sustainable development wouldn't they all have stayed home and spared the world the carbon footprint?
What they are first likely to notice as they leave the airport, however, is not the salty tang of ocean in the breeze, but the stench of raw sewage.
That’s because the airport sits by a bay that absorbs about 320
million gallons of raw waste water a day: 480 Olympic swimming pools
worth of filth.
As they head into the city, they will note soda bottles bobbing on
the water and the colorful detritus that wreathes the shore: discarded
television sets, couches and broken toys snarled in plastic. They will
likely get caught in a traffic jam, peering out at the acrid haze of
diesel fumes and exhaust from the commercial port that lingers over the
city.
The
United Nations Environment Program warned this month that the planet’s
environmental systems ‘‘are being pushed toward their biophysical
limits,’’ and for the 50,000 visitors from 190 countries streaming in
for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, the welcome here is a
rank reminder of just how hard it will be to balance economic growth and
environmental protection across the globe....
Carlos Bocuhy, who
heads the Brazilian Institute of Environmental Protection: ‘‘What we
have here is a crisis in a civilizational model. We are nearing a
moment when all these crises will start feeding into each other. We are
facing the possibility of collapse if we don’t change course.’’
The feeling here is the world economy is going to collapse a hell of a lot sooner than the environment.
The problems visitors will see in Rio alone are daunting. Take the
bay. Twenty years ago, when the last UN Earth Summit was held here,
promises were made to clean it up. Since then, seven waste treatment
stations have been built, but because of poor planning and corruption,
only three of them work, and at a fraction of capacity.
Pfft!
And they are supposed to be a good, left-wing government.
Even on Governor’s Island, which houses both the international
airport and the federal university of Rio de Janeiro, waste water pours
unfiltered into the environment.
The treatment plant there doesn’t work either, said Sandra Azevedo, a
biologist with the Carlos Chagas Filho Biophysics Institute.
‘‘We are living here in a time and space warp. We have problems like,
‘My Wi-Fi is down,’ ‘I’m stuck on this problem in my stem-cell
research,’ and at the same time, we are right next to open, running
sewage,’’ she said.
‘‘We work next to a massive toilet,’’ said Azevedo.
Palestinians live next to one.
And when the pits fill up they dump them in the ocean.
Related: 'Toxic waste' behind Somali piracy
And now the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific are polluted!
Many of Rio’s poorest residents still count on the bay, polluted as
it is, for food.
No!!
Talk about literally eating shit!
Even as Azevedo complained about the bay, Severino
Raimundo Batista was getting his boat ready for a few hours of fishing.
‘‘It used to be much better, the catch here,’’ he said. ‘‘Recently, it’s been very dirty, a lot of trash floating.’’
The Inter-American Development Bank and the state are funding a $553
million cleanup project meant to dredge canals, build more sewage plants
and restore marshlands.
But the world has trillions for weapons purchases and bank bailouts.
And more money lost to corruption, 'eh?
I beginning to believe the world would have been a much better place had our beneficial overlords left well enough alone.
Batista is waiting for the day it’s finished.
‘‘This used to be good for fishing,’’ he said. ‘‘It was a beauty. It would be good to see it like that again.’’
--more--"
Related: Sewage Dump Site Teems With Sea Life
I always thought the NYT was a pos.
