These are little, practically insignificant things in the global scheme. I couldn't possibly be happier that air bags saved your son's life, but the chemicals used to inflate that bag are horrifically toxic - one of the dealier poisons known - and they don't degrade any faster than PCB's. Think in tens of thousands of years.
Airline safety is all well and good, but the jet engine emissions are eroding the stratosphere and airline traffic is increasing due to higher safety standrds, isn't it?
Been to L.A. quite recently - and Phoenix, Arizona and Medford - and that air isn't fit for a kid to breathe. Didn't we have serious health advisories for the air quality in Medford last Autumn? Sure, they aren't Beijing, but that doesn't mean the air is fine - it's just less toxic than it was.
Catalytic converters didn't eliminate exhaust pollutants, they simply reduce the amount being spewed into the air. Increased fuel economy? Doesn't that put more cars on the roads driving more miles and neutralizing the impled benefits of catalytic converters?
The Cuyahoga, Detroit and Chcago river have stopped catching on fire every year, but to say the Great Lakes have recovered is wrong. You'd be an idiot to eat a fish caught in the Great Lakes without reading all the multi-layered health warnings about how many fractions of an ounce you should think about eating. And really, is any amount of that crap good for you, or is it just in such a low dose that they don't expect you'll drop in your tracks?
Solar power requires incredibly toxic and long-lived materials in the manufacture of solar collectors. Wind farms have dramtic effects on local climate stability.
And all those great laws meant to save our lives: The Clean Water Act, The Clean Air Act, The Endangered Species Act? They've all been systematically gutted and the agencies created to test and enforce have had their budget stripped so dramatically that they barely function and there are now so many exemptions that the laws are becoming meaningless. When we hear political shills bemoaning how regulations are strangling Free Enterprise, which regulations do we think they're talking about? They're careful not to say, aren't they?
I'll give extra credit to any who recognize the George Carlin theme...
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that try to standardize everything so that their tiny minds can categorize, organize, and control what they don't grasp and understand. Then you have the paper work, the laws, the measures, the this and that that. It takes up time and nothing gets done. Granted I think that a biologist's standpoint is crucial, even if their research takes years to come to a conclusive point/resolution, it is for the better in most cases ... the biologist's work that is. But for all the laws and congress, and government that interjects their "power" (power we give them) and hand, it doesn't solve a thing.
