Jubbergun wrote:
Banning DDT did more to harm people in third world countries than it did to save the environment...especially since the book, Silent Spring, exaggerated the claims of damage. While banning DDT in industrialized countries was likely a necessary step, banning it in Africa was a boneheaded move that allowed the unchecked spread of malaria and other diseases spread by insect pests like mosquitoes.
DDT was never banned for use in mosquito control - it's still used for that purpose in Africa. Banning its use in agriculture was actually beneficial, as blanket spraying for crop pests in some countries had already resulted in DDT-resistant mosquitoes, and probably would have in Africa too if it hadn't been banned for that purpose.
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Everything degrades, even if it doesn't "bio"degrade. It just takes some things longer than others. Plastic is still superior to glass because it doesn't break and cut the hell out of your children. Not to mention that methods to recycle both glass and plastic have been developed that reduce the amount of both kinds of waste.
On the other hand, glass doesn't form enormous floating patches in the middle of the ocean.
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As certain types of fish become more scarce, the price for them goes up. As the price goes up, more people are priced out of eating it. At a certain point, fishing it becomes unprofitable. Other types of fish take the place of the overfished populations, and the damaged populations have an opportunity to recover.
Neither economics nor ecosystems necessarily work like this. Technological advances have made it possible to catch more and more of shrinking populations, meaning that scarcity of the resource doesn't increase prices until it's too late. Populations also can't always recover after overfishing. The fishery for Atlantic cod in Canada has been closed since 1993, but the populations aren't growing. The ecosystem has shifted to a new equilibrium, with very few cod where they were once abundant.
