CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Why Should We Put Up With Pollution?

Brick factory air pollution. The Sun is barely visible just above the factory chimney. Photo: Janak Bhatta. Wikipedia Commons.

Pollution harms and often kills. It’s almost entirely anthropogenic, meaning, it is a result of human activity. Pollution is bad and dangerous.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences says that air pollution is harming humans and the natural world:

“Air pollution is a familiar environmental health hazard. We know what we’re looking at when brown haze settles over a city, exhaust billows across a busy highway, or a plume rises from a smokestack. Some air pollution is not seen, but its pungent smell alerts you.

It is a major threat to global health and prosperity. Air pollution, in all forms, is responsible for more than 6.5 million deaths each year globally, a number that has increased over the past two decades. Air pollution is a mix of hazardous substances…. Ozone, an atmospheric gas, is often called smog when at ground level. It is created when pollutants emitted by cars, power plants, industrial boilers, refineries, and other sources chemically react in the presence of sunlight.”

Why do we foul our nest?

But why should American company executives create products that add danger even to the air they and the rest of us breathe? In war, at least, the weapons are for killing the enemy. But who is the enemy in the cities of America breathing smog? And who is spreading this smog in the air we breathe?

I live in Southern California with a population of about 18 million. Thus this smog threatens all of us, young and........

© CounterPunch