Once upon a time, the earth's rivers ran joyfully to the sea, providing clean water for all they passed on the journey, but that was once upon a time, long, long ago. Today, there is no joy in the river's flow because it is poisoned at every turn and bend of its banks. Who is to blame for the contamination of so many of the world's rivers?
I am, and you are. Perhaps not intentionally, perhaps it was the choices we made before we knew the earth could not keep up with all the refuse we emptied into our waterways. However, what about the choices we have made in the decades since the environmentalist started warning us? We ignored them because it was out of sight-out of mind, and we continued to pollute our rivers.
Rivers have run clear since the beginning of time, so what changed? The population of the human race changed. It grew by leaps and bounds to the present day number of almost 7,000,000,000 and the majority live near rivers that provide the water they need.
While the rivers were once able to purify the water by diluting what we tossed away, they can no longer handle the great quantity of pollutants created by this mass of humanity. One drop of ink in a gallon of water isn't noticeable, but keep adding drops and soon the water will be blue.
It would be easy to blame it on companies who dumped their waste into streams and rivers, or to blame it on third world countries unable to treat their waste or even farmers who use toxic chemicals that eventually wash into rivers. However, it wouldn't be the whole truth.
We, as consumers, have played our part in all of this as we chased the dream and grabbed at the brass ring. We cared little for where or how our needs and wants were manufactured or at what cost to the environment. We only cared about the cheapest price, forcing manufacturers to cut unsafe corners because they too were only worried about the bottom line and not the pollution of a precious, dwindling resource.
We depended on our governments to monitor big industry and farmers, to make certain they were not harming anyone, but the politicians were just like us, chasing the same dreams only on a larger scale. Dirty little deals made under the table, spoke doom for our rivers as dollars were stuffed into greedy unethical hands of those we had blindly elected.
Why did we elect them? We elected them for all the wrong reasons because we couldn't spare the time to check them out. We pulled the lever by their names so we are as guilty as they and those they covered for, maybe even more so.
Therefore, we can't point our finger at anyone but ourselves. We can change though, and get involved at local, state and federal levels. But, where do we even start to clean up our contaminated rivers? We start at home by making a commitment to learn and do everything in our power to no longer be the one to blame for the contamination of so many of the world's rivers.