A Modest Proposal for Cleaning up the Planetby Fr. Paul Weinberger The Dallas Morning News recently ran a wire story about companies in this country which have tainted the rivers with mercury. It was a short item that reminded me of other environmental problems. Recall the demands made on EXXON to pay for the cleanup after the Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Considerthat when you buy new tires there is a charge for recycling the old ones. The same goes for freon in the car's A/C. Americans buy tires and gas; they have A/C in their cars. They’ve heard about mercury in fish. (Who wants to eat seafood, a secular sacrament today, tainted by mercury dumped by industry?)Not a whole lot is needed to getfolks online to address these types of environmental pollution. Another recent news story told about doctors who believe the oral contraceptivepill needs to be strengthened. Evidently some women are still getting pregnant. But what happens when oral contraceptives get into the water supply? Countless studies show fish and frogs have mutated due to the pill which reaches rivers and lakes though waste water treatment facilities. The female hormones make frogs disfigured, some growing extra legs (the French will love this!) and the fish have the equivalent of a sex-change from male to female How are pharmaceutical companies any different from clear cut coal miners who level whole mountains, clogging streams and rivers with valuable topsoil? What if the companies which manufacture oral contraceptives had to pass on a surcharge to women for environmental cleanup? Public awareness would be raised and people would demand tighter restrictions on what goes into our lakes and rivers.Our tender planet must be protected. Let’s get the ecologists to call on pharmaceutical companies to clean up their act. The very same arguments could be used if Planned Parenthood and other abortionists are found dumping into the municipal water supply the bodies of aborted children which have passed through a “disposal” at the clinic. Make them pay for their environmental pollution. If these measures were successful they would make the costs of chemical contraception and abortion go up, up, and up. Recall how mobster Al Capone was finally put away on charges of tax evasion? It didn't kill him but itsure slowed him down. We are stewards of the earth, not her children. |