{"content":[{"text":"The Fossil Makers","bbox":{"left":0.121008,"top":0.082963,"width":0.132388,"height":0.017490999999999993}},{"text":"Schmidt-Bleek","bbox":{"left":0.484006,"top":0.082963,"width":0.10494699999999996,"height":0.017490999999999993}},{"text":"33","bbox":{"left":0.851717,"top":0.082963,"width":0.017392999999999992,"height":0.017490999999999993}},{"text":"Classical environmental policy: water","bbox":{"left":0.338824,"top":0.112995,"width":0.38093,"height":0.02309399999999999}},{"text":"Frankly most ecological problems have not really been taken seriously by the majority \n of people--or by politicians. The reason for this is a narrowed focus. Where changed \n environmental conditions directly affect human well-being, they are taken very seriously and \n expeditious relief is made a political priority. The subtle and usually very slow changes in our \n biological life support systems brought about inadvertently by human activity are often the \n much more dangerous and insidious ones. The narrowed focus may obstruct our view of the \n real problem. By trying to ameliorate the perceived problem we may be unwittingly causing \n greater harm to the systems whose support functions we have yet to appreciate. Furthermore, \n we might very well commit the fallacy of viewing ourselves as apart from the biosphere rather \n than a part of it. But humans live within, and because of, the biosphere. As long as we allow \n the dying forests to remain the concern of environmentalists and foresters, we have not yet \n understood what is happening to our life support systems. To put it differently, our concern \n does not really appear to be for the well-being of humanity, but for the well-being of one \n generation--our own. Throughout history this has never been a contradiction, but because of \n the speed with which we are transforming our biosphere, it has become one. \n Our relationship to water illustrates our short-winded reactions to fundamental \n problems. This example also illustrates an area of concern in which some issues, though far \n from enough of them, have taken a turn for the better. \n One of the first effects of industrialization on what we now call \"the environment\" \n which caught most people's attention was the pollution of rivers and streams. The \n contribution made by fouled water to diseases such as cholera and dysentery are as old as the \n cities themselves; but this isn't our concern, because for centuries people did not understand \n these connections. What we are talking about are the effects everyone can see and smell. \n Water that is dyed with bright colors, that is choked with large amounts of foam and out of \n which dying fish are washed up on the banks. \n The earliest disputes over the preservation of streams and rivers in the last century are \n chronicled in Wilhelm Raabe's novel Pfister's Mühle1. This first of disputes was not \n instigated by environmentalists who appreciated the ecosystemic integrity of the water, but by \n fishermen who saw their livelihood threatened. Initially the fishermen lost. Apparently their \n contribution to the general welfare was thought to be less important than that of the polluting \n industry. From an ecological perspective, many other such defeats must have been suffered \n since that time, as our pride over aquatic life returning to rivers as large as the Rhine and the \n Thames can attest. \n Once freshwater fishing ceased in Western Europe, the inhibitions vanished. Karl \n Otto Henseling characterizes quite vividly the development of jurisdiction and of the laws \n governing trade and industry in the second half of the nineteenth century, in his book on the \n history of the chemical industry2. The verdict of the Reichsgericht (German Supreme Court \n until 1945) of December 22, 1897, from which Henseling quotes the following sentence, \n constituted a milestone in this development. \"The water flowing in a public as well as in a \n privately held river constitutes the sluice provided by nature, not only for runoff, but for the \n frequently contaminated water necessitated by economic enterprise and which must be carried \n off, as well.\" \n Not until after World War II was anything done about this state of affairs, and even","bbox":{"left":0.118992,"top":0.157582,"width":0.759804,"height":0.72533}},{"text":"33","bbox":{"left":0.490487,"top":0.898946,"width":0.016839999999999966,"height":0.015780000000000016}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}