I'll say this, if you saw An Inconvenient Truth and were scared by it, stay away from Planet in Peril. Bits and pieces of it were disheartening, like species loss due to poaching and habitat destruction. They showed the effects a single species can have on a giant range of land.
But then they got into what we are doing to ourselves via pollution. Now, I knew that China was poisoning itself to death, I've read story after story after story about how their lack of environmental care is coming right back at them into their food supply and is slowly killing them. But for some reason I thought that here in the US we were, for the most part, fine.
But dear God, the last half an hour or so of the show scared the crap out of me. I know there's still pollution issues in the US, but I believed that was a thing of the 70's, and that for the most part, all we were really was suffering the legacy, but that we were cleaning it up like at Superfund sites. Well, no, that's not the case. Americans are contaminated with hundreds of different chemicals whose effects on the human body have barely been looked at. Some of that is because the government requires the FDA to make drug companies go through years of tests, but makes chemical companies go through a paltry 90 day approval process, and literally thousands of new chemicals pass through unchecked every year. And they find their way into our bodies through many sources, such as the food chain.
Seriously this is some scary stuff. At least I felt like Al Gore was saying "Hey, this stuff is still a ways off, even if some of it is happening now we can still stop it if we work together and change our lives." But with Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta, it was more like "Everything around you is the touch of death and your bodies are riddle with deadly chemicals that will give you cancer and cause infertility."
Cooper actually had his own blood tested for 250 different manmade chemicals, and they found he was positive for more than 140 of them, including DDT, PCBs, and a couple others I can't remember the name of, but one of them apparent he gets through the makeup he wears on camera, which is linked to infertility and thyroid disfunction in lab rats.
Now, I don't expect the government to solve all our problems for us, but if we make drug companies go through extensive testing to make sure the drugs are safe, shouldn't we make chemical makers go through the same tests? This is one area where I don't give a damn about the economy. If we're literally poisoning ourselves to death, what the does the economy even matter if we're not around to enjoy the fruits of our labors? This is messed up.
And I can only imagine what tomorrow night's conclusion will have in store for me.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:If we're literally poisoning ourselves to death, what the does the economy even matter if we're not around to enjoy the fruits of our labors?
It depends how slowly we're poisoning ourselves to death.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
quote: But with Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta, it was more like "Everything around you is the touch of death and your bodies are riddle with deadly chemicals that will give you cancer and cause infertility."
Didn't we just discuss this in another thread? "You are going to die unless you tune in to the next segment of Planet in Peril!" How are people living longer and longer if we are riddled with deadly chemicals?
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
We're living longer because medicine has advanced tremendously, not because we're living in a healthier environment.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
quote:Originally posted by DarkKnight:
quote: But with Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta, it was more like "Everything around you is the touch of death and your bodies are riddle with deadly chemicals that will give you cancer and cause infertility."
Didn't we just discuss this in another thread? "You are going to die unless you tune in to the next segment of Planet in Peril!" How are people living longer and longer if we are riddled with deadly chemicals?
We're living longer because we are getting stupider; haven't you read the Shadow series?
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
This type of show bother me. Not because I actually believe them, but because so many other people do. Bad news sells, so we're bombarded with it every day, despite the fact that things such as crime and pollution (in the US) are down compared with 10 or 20 years ago. They've been predicting the end of the world for eons. Hasn't happened yet.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
Every year since Katrina they have forecasted "Worst hurricane season ever!" and that has been completely untrue as well.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Well, that's not true. I believe the last two years they've actually predicted relatively light hurricane seasons.
Second of all, we're not living longer. Mine is the first generation to actually see a reduction in life expectancy from the generation before. It looks like we are though, because many people are surviving diseases that even 10 years ago would have killed them.
Jhai -
So you think everything in the show was bunk?
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
quote: Well, that's not true. I believe the last two years they've actually predicted relatively light hurricane seasons.
quote: Second of all, we're not living longer. Mine is the first generation to actually see a reduction in life expectancy from the generation before. It looks like we are though, because many people are surviving diseases that even 10 years ago would have killed them.
Do you have a source for this too?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
If you can't look, I'll take a quick look for it later tonight when I get home form work.
And by the way, could you explain to me how "Above normal" is the same thing as "WORSE HURRICANE SEASON EVER!!" Thanks. Both your links support what I said, so I'll skip looking up the info on that one, thanks.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
quote: And by the way, could you explain to me how "Above normal" is the same thing as "WORSE HURRICANE SEASON EVER!!" Thanks. Both your links support what I said, so I'll skip looking up the info on that one, thanks.
You specifically said
quote: Well, that's not true. I believe the last two years they've actually predicted relatively light hurricane seasons.
quote: U.S. hurricane experts say the sharp rise in storm activity is related to a natural shift in climatic conditions and sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic that is expected to last from 15 to 40 years.
Some climatologists, however, say there are indications that human-induced global warming could be increasing the average intensity of tropical cyclones, although there is no evidence to date that it is affecting the number of hurricanes.