More stuff that seemed bad but is fine now and nobody talks about it anymore: acid rain. Running out of places to put landfills. China not taking our recycling and that causing massive local budget problems. Peak oil. What’s next on that list eh?
"The river has actually gotten a lot cleaner thanks to a mix of mega- and micro-projects, it’s now mostly swimmable, and there are more projects in the pipeline that should lead to a more swimmable river in the near future."
This is definitely the correct way of looking at it. Everything from "big pipes in the ground" style projects to smaller-scale, widely-distributed features to infiltrate stormwater, has contributed in incremental ways.
It's worth saying that one of the big contributors to improved water quality in the Chesapeake watershed has been significant improvements in wastewater treatment. Quite a few wastewater plants throughout the DC/MD/VA area have been upgraded with a combination of improved biological treatment and filtration. This achieves better treatment of bulk organics and suspended solids (the classic wastewater pollutants) as well as removal of nitrogen and phosphorus (which is inportant because nutrient pollution drives eutrophication and fish kills). A similar effort and success story has played out in the last dozen or so years around the Great Lakes.
As an old, 72 years, former hydrologist this article really touched me. I remember as a young person those old burning river stories, and not daring to swim in an urban river. It's great news and it's incremental improvements and look where we've gotten. Thanks so much. Just think, if the rivers are mostly clean enough for people to swim in them, then the aquatic life has a toe hold or better.
I have to mention it’s bizarre your outright hostility to any investment to reduce the COVID disease burden while having become a total convert on the importance of clean water and clean (outdoor) air.
It’s exceedingly likely we will look back on today’s insane respiratory virus burden (from COVID, flu, RSV, many others) as far more consequential to people’s long term health than recognized at the time.
We are finding new issues with viral infections every day from increased cancer and autoimmune risks to fatigue and neurological complications. The complete acceptance and lack of concern today is exactly the same as water contamination, smoking, and air pollution were treated back in the day.
I’d strongly encourage you to look at the history of these struggles and reflect on what things today will follow the same journey.
There has also been a lot of progress on the state level, in terms of regulators raising standards for wastewater treatment. Many states in the Midwest and southeast have really tightened the screws on these dischargers and I expect we will see some good news on the Gulf of Mexico dead zone in the few years.
The concept of Secret Congress is a good frame and we should aim to enable this sort of legislating more often. I think removing cameras from committee meetings might help, for example
A few years ago Nicholas Kristof wrote a column for the NYTimes about how much better off people in poorer parts of the world are now than 40 (I think) years ago: less poverty, better medical care, more education, etc.
Who knew? No one wants to tell you anything is getting, or has gotten better.
If we look at news coverage and consumption over the past 25 years, I bet we will find that it’s inversely correlated with birth rate. People who are constantly told and reminded that we are “going to hell in a hand-basket” don’t want to, or don’t think they should have kids.
There are a few other things going on too besides negativity bias. (1) as Hans Rosling points out, bad news tends to happen quickly while good news happens slowly, and it’s hard to cover stories that don’t have a good hook (eg the cuyahoga catching on fire) (2) a lot of good news is the “dog that didn’t bark” (nobody shot by police this week!) and it’s hard to cover a negative.
"Alexandria is building a new pipe that will stop the city from dumping raw sewage into the river"
I know this is supposed to be a feel-good post, but WTF? Why is anyone dumping *raw sewage* into a river in the US in Anno Domini 2022? They don't have wastewater treatment plants in Virginia?!?
I don’t know this particular case, but many of the first modern cities to install sewer systems have a single system that takes both toilet water and rainfall that goes into drains from the streets. When there is unusually large rainfall, some of the excess water escapes directly into rivers before treatment.
Since no one likes untreated sewage flowing into the river, most cities that built their first sewer system a bit later have two separate systems - “sewers” that take water from building pipes and treat it, and “storm drains” that take untreated water from the streets and dump it in the river.
Once you’ve got a combined sewer system, it would be a lot of work to dig up all the pipes and separate the systems. Maybe this is what Alexandria is doing?
I was listening to the most recent Bad Takes this morning and since my husband grew up in the San Fernando Valley, the part about Smog Alerts peaked my interest. I realized that it would be hard to convince most young people that the air they breathe is cleaner than the air we breathed as children because the narrative of environmental change is one of progressive decline. I am not suggesting that the greenhouse gas emissions problem isn't enormous and terrible, it just struck me that it would be cognitively challenging to persuade them that some things have improved because of government actions taken to limit emissions.
Walking out of Avatar 2 I had a similar thought, which I annoyingly said to my friends, along the lines of "that was fun, though it feels like the politics of the movie are now slightly out of place?" It feels a little harder to imagine the "ruined Earth" future scenario in 2022 than it did in 2009. Things have improved somewhat! Environmentally, at least.
More stuff that seemed bad but is fine now and nobody talks about it anymore: acid rain. Running out of places to put landfills. China not taking our recycling and that causing massive local budget problems. Peak oil. What’s next on that list eh?
"The river has actually gotten a lot cleaner thanks to a mix of mega- and micro-projects, it’s now mostly swimmable, and there are more projects in the pipeline that should lead to a more swimmable river in the near future."
This is definitely the correct way of looking at it. Everything from "big pipes in the ground" style projects to smaller-scale, widely-distributed features to infiltrate stormwater, has contributed in incremental ways.
It's worth saying that one of the big contributors to improved water quality in the Chesapeake watershed has been significant improvements in wastewater treatment. Quite a few wastewater plants throughout the DC/MD/VA area have been upgraded with a combination of improved biological treatment and filtration. This achieves better treatment of bulk organics and suspended solids (the classic wastewater pollutants) as well as removal of nitrogen and phosphorus (which is inportant because nutrient pollution drives eutrophication and fish kills). A similar effort and success story has played out in the last dozen or so years around the Great Lakes.
As an old, 72 years, former hydrologist this article really touched me. I remember as a young person those old burning river stories, and not daring to swim in an urban river. It's great news and it's incremental improvements and look where we've gotten. Thanks so much. Just think, if the rivers are mostly clean enough for people to swim in them, then the aquatic life has a toe hold or better.
I have to mention it’s bizarre your outright hostility to any investment to reduce the COVID disease burden while having become a total convert on the importance of clean water and clean (outdoor) air.
It’s exceedingly likely we will look back on today’s insane respiratory virus burden (from COVID, flu, RSV, many others) as far more consequential to people’s long term health than recognized at the time.
We are finding new issues with viral infections every day from increased cancer and autoimmune risks to fatigue and neurological complications. The complete acceptance and lack of concern today is exactly the same as water contamination, smoking, and air pollution were treated back in the day.
I’d strongly encourage you to look at the history of these struggles and reflect on what things today will follow the same journey.
There has also been a lot of progress on the state level, in terms of regulators raising standards for wastewater treatment. Many states in the Midwest and southeast have really tightened the screws on these dischargers and I expect we will see some good news on the Gulf of Mexico dead zone in the few years.
The concept of Secret Congress is a good frame and we should aim to enable this sort of legislating more often. I think removing cameras from committee meetings might help, for example
A few years ago Nicholas Kristof wrote a column for the NYTimes about how much better off people in poorer parts of the world are now than 40 (I think) years ago: less poverty, better medical care, more education, etc.
Who knew? No one wants to tell you anything is getting, or has gotten better.
If we look at news coverage and consumption over the past 25 years, I bet we will find that it’s inversely correlated with birth rate. People who are constantly told and reminded that we are “going to hell in a hand-basket” don’t want to, or don’t think they should have kids.
I suppose it’s easy to do all this “good work” when you don’t have to worry about paying for it. Just add more debt, print more money. Party on!
Those old nattering nabobs of negativism flapping their lips again!
Those old nattering nabobs of negativism flapping their lips again!
There are a few other things going on too besides negativity bias. (1) as Hans Rosling points out, bad news tends to happen quickly while good news happens slowly, and it’s hard to cover stories that don’t have a good hook (eg the cuyahoga catching on fire) (2) a lot of good news is the “dog that didn’t bark” (nobody shot by police this week!) and it’s hard to cover a negative.
This is what Upworthy aimed to fix, but you’ll never guess what happened to them.
"Alexandria is building a new pipe that will stop the city from dumping raw sewage into the river"
I know this is supposed to be a feel-good post, but WTF? Why is anyone dumping *raw sewage* into a river in the US in Anno Domini 2022? They don't have wastewater treatment plants in Virginia?!?
Sorry, https://youtu.be/s09pfBEJYHc?t=34
I don’t know this particular case, but many of the first modern cities to install sewer systems have a single system that takes both toilet water and rainfall that goes into drains from the streets. When there is unusually large rainfall, some of the excess water escapes directly into rivers before treatment.
Since no one likes untreated sewage flowing into the river, most cities that built their first sewer system a bit later have two separate systems - “sewers” that take water from building pipes and treat it, and “storm drains” that take untreated water from the streets and dump it in the river.
Once you’ve got a combined sewer system, it would be a lot of work to dig up all the pipes and separate the systems. Maybe this is what Alexandria is doing?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_sewer
It's worth noting that excessive negativity bias in media seems to be a particularly US phenomenon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/24/briefing/boulder-shooting-george-segal-astrazeneca.html
I was listening to the most recent Bad Takes this morning and since my husband grew up in the San Fernando Valley, the part about Smog Alerts peaked my interest. I realized that it would be hard to convince most young people that the air they breathe is cleaner than the air we breathed as children because the narrative of environmental change is one of progressive decline. I am not suggesting that the greenhouse gas emissions problem isn't enormous and terrible, it just struck me that it would be cognitively challenging to persuade them that some things have improved because of government actions taken to limit emissions.
Loved running around in PE in a toxic cloud because smog alerts only got released the hour after.
Walking out of Avatar 2 I had a similar thought, which I annoyingly said to my friends, along the lines of "that was fun, though it feels like the politics of the movie are now slightly out of place?" It feels a little harder to imagine the "ruined Earth" future scenario in 2022 than it did in 2009. Things have improved somewhat! Environmentally, at least.