In June of 1969 the
Cuyahoga River caught fire. After over forty years I still can’t get used to
the image of a body of water igniting, but apparently for the river that
meanders through Cleveland, Ohio it was nothing new. In the previous hundred
years, the Cuyahoga had caught fire at least nine times. A conflagration on the
Cuyahoga in 1952 caused over 1.5 million dollars in damage.
Apparently
by the time of the tenth fire, the trash and pollution that had provided the
fuel for these fires had befouled the river to such a degree that it was, in
essence, a toxic waste dump devoid of life. Time magazine reported on the
Cuyahoga River fire in August of 1969 and summed up the condition of the river
as such:
Some River!
Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than
flows. The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration dryly notes:
"The lower Cuyahoga has no visible signs of life, not even low forms such
as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes." It is
also—literally—a fire hazard.
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| The Cuyahoga goes up in flames in 1969. Photo from NOAA* |
With environmental
degradation of a river there is the degradation itself, pollutants and trash
thrown in the river, and the consequences of that degradation: a lifeless river
that catches on fire. Anyone can see the pipes from factories and sewage
treatment facilities dumping their waste into a stream, and anyone can see a
putrid, lifeless body of water. It is easy enough to make the connection
between the two.
The
conflagration on a dead river, as well as other dire pollution problems with
other bodies of water—for example Lake Erie being declared a “dead lake”—and
people’s ability to make the connection between the pollution and the troubles
of these waters lead to reforms. Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972.
Similar alarming environmental crises—the extirpation of the bald eagle from
much of the lower 48 states and dense visible smog hovering over major cities—spurned Congress and President Nixon to pass the Clean Air Act and the
Endangered Species Act.
We
now have headlines like the following in The Guardian: Colorado wildfires are ‘what global warming really looks like.’ Citing the views of Michael
Oppenheimer, a Princeton University geosciences professor and a lead author of
the UN’s climate science panel, and Steven Running, a forest ecologist at the
University of Montana, The Guardian says that effects of global warming are
giving Colorado the conditions for the wildfires. Winters with lighter snows
and springs occurring earlier in the year give Colorado an earlier and longer
fire season. The higher temperatures consistent with the science of global
warming also enhance conditions for wildfire. Add to this scenario lots of fuel
for the fires provided by dead trees killed by the mountain pine beetle, which
are surviving in greater numbers due to the milder winters.
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| Is this the time to have a Cuyahoga moment? Photo: Scott Seibold (@scottseibold), Twitter |
The
Cuyahoga had been befouled for decades, to the point of lifelessness, before
any serious action was taken to clean it up. And as I said earlier, folks had
the advantage back then of making a clear connection between dumping junk in
the river and the river’s problems. In the case of the Colorado fires, though
what the scientists talk about is easy enough to understand, people can’t see a
direct connection between our cars and factories belching greenhouse gasses and
whole mountainsides of forest going up in smoke. Because of this I fear that
there are going to be lots more wildfires and lots of houses burning down in
lots of other places besides Colorado, and there won’t be anybody to say, as
folks said along the banks of the Cuyahoga in 1969, “OMG we need to DO
something!”
* http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/pollution/media/supp_pol02d.html
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