All the problems of the environment caused by humans can be answered
if you can satisfactorily answer these two questions:
- Why do people still smoke tobacco?
- Why do people have more than two offspring?
Gerry Galarneau
- Why do people still smoke tobacco?
- Why do people have more than two offspring?
Tobacco and overpopulation are certainly the “politically correct”
sources to blame. Sift out the politics and think about our own
responsibilities as metal smiths. We are close to the end of a long
chain of production using metal and stones. Where do they come from?
Think about the fact that in order to get what we need, people must
mine it out of the earth. How environmentally friendly is mining?
And how about the stones we use from third world countries? Have you
ever seen films of the young Columbian women chest deep in muddy
runoff pools from the emerald mines searching through the much for
small specks of emerald ? Then when they find one, they put it in
their mouths for safekeeping while they search for more. The pools
are said to be contaminated with mercury runoff which the mineworkers
use. And the deep diamond mines in South Africa, the lapis mines in
Afghanistan, it goes on and on.
What we do is politically acceptable, indeed desirable, for we take
the wealth of the earth and transform it into treasures for the elite
and into wealth for the nations. It has been so since antiquity.
Even God wanted it, according to Genesis, to decorate the Tabernacle.
I believe that we as human beings are part of this world, to be
nurtured and sustained by it. In turn we must be good stewards of
the resources we have been granted. We are not a virus which
contaminates the planet by our very existence which is such a popular
radical political view now.
The blame game can be spread all around to everyone, but if you
indulge in this, separate political agenda from fact. We are as
responsible as anyone else is on this planet. We cannot sit in our
lofty studios and blame others, we must look to ourselves.
Barbara Gillis
@Chris
ALL, Tobacco and overpopulation are symptoms of what is wrong with
human interpretation of environmental problems. First - it is not the
tobacco. It is the fact that science has proven without a doubt that
putting tobacco residues into a human body is detrimental to the
health of the human organism. Yet humans are still starting today to
smoke. They know the implications and still smoke. This same
rationale can be applied to jewelers. How many of you still use
cyanide based chemicals? How many other chemicals are available that
are proven safer, but not used? Second, for every step the human race
makes at extending life times of individuals we must make similar
steps in scientific research to maintain environmental quality.
Every new or extended life uses energy and creates wastes. To keep
our environment healthy we must devise new ways to create energy and
process our waste. This applies to all of us. It is not “Politically
Correct”. It is just fact that in order to make the changes
necessary to ensure a healthy environment we must change peoples
actions and limit population of humans. Scientific advancement will
not keep up with an expanding population that does not accept
responsibility for its individual actions.
Gerry Galarneau