Are there risks in things we do or use every day, which could be harming us, our children and grandchildren? We spend a lot of time here talking about things like global warming, potential medicine losses and pandemics. In the next few blogs, we want to get you talking about every day things. Things closer to home, which may be slowly and insidiously spoiling our quality of life, and destroying the chances of future generations. We’ll be talking about things like certain metals and other poisons, as well as plastics, pesticides, fertilisers and other well-intentioned but short sighted practices which could be reformed or abolished without much harm, and to great general benefit.
And “well intentioned” is the key for us . Because unlike conspiracy theorists, we don’t think the people involved are necessarily evil. Very often, they were motivated by genuinely laudable ideals such as improving food supplies, or increasing technological performance. The biggest trouble comes from limited thinking, solving a problem here and now, without scoping the wider consequences. The fall-out, that chilling phrase from the last century. Which in turn implies that these problems could be solvable, with a little more thought. Wouldn’t it be nice if LSS came up with an optimistic set of blogs, for once? Try them, and see what you think. The first will be coming up next.
#heavy metals #plastics #pollution #pesticide #herbicide
Learning, Science and Society 