Perceiving a potential threat from the Terran Empire, the two Marchwardens of the Lauran System initiated secret automated mass production of defense systems that seriously damage an attacking fleet, forcing it to withdraw. In this respect, their planet, Avalon, is unique in the Domain of Ythri.
A new report discloses that British rivers are polluted by plastic, sewage and agricultural waste and fertilizers. A major part of the problem is serious under-investment in sewage and environmental protection. The problems do not include lack of warning. (Decades ago, a superhero comic book story featured aliens who had adapted to a polluted terrestroid environment accelerating pollution on Earth in order both to eliminate mankind and to make Earth habitable by them.) We need the attitude of Ferune and Holm.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Avalon was unique in the Domain of Ythri because of its human colonists ability to organize and fight in wars, as discussed by Stirling. And, even so, it took men like Daniel Holm, and Ythrians like Ferune, years of nagging, prodding, and skulduggery to get Avalon as prepared for war as seen in THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND. They had to fight against the HEADWIND of Ythrian natural inclinations and how those inclinations would affect humans themselves.
Ad astra! Sean
It's always difficult for human beings to do things where the payoff is distant and diffuse, and the cost immediate and particular.
Since needs are infinite and resources always limited, so you need to make decisions on priorities -- and that means no resources for things that people actually do need and want. Any governing authority is incessantly badgered and pulled this way and that in the allocation of its (limited) resources.
Back in the 19th century, the Thames was so polluted that the "Great Stench" drove Parliament out of session in the 1850's. There weren't any fish in the river anywhere near London, and most of what Londoners drank was very, very dangerous.
That, and a bunch of cholera epidemics, launched a major cleanup in the mid to late Victorian period -- the Thames Embankment is part of it, made to accommodate a huge sewer project, among other things. Other cities then copied London, installing sewer systems and building distant reservoirs and aqueducts and water filters and sewage treatment plants.
But the cholera had been happening since the 1830's, the river had been getting dirtier every year, and a little later Prince Consort Albert died of typhoid from contaminated water at the Palace.
And while they didn't have the bacterial theory of disease yet, it was well-known and perfectly obvious that polluted water and bad sewage disposal killed people -- people of all ranks, incidentlaly.
It took a while for the pressure to build to the point where the resources were diverted to cleaning things up.
These things go in cycles. It's just the way human beings operate.
NB: it wasn't until well after 1900 that death rates in British cities dropped to levels at all comparable to the countryside; the last of the "urban penalty" didn't disappear until after WW1.
Even dirt-poor and badly fed farm laborers living in damp, crowded cottages had lower mortality (and infant mortality) rates that city-dwellers, including city-dwellers who were much more prosperous than they were.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I personally know what you mean. For many years I've been trying to save and invest. Which necessarily meant denying myself much I could have obtained now, at the cost of having less in the future. Just trying to think ahead.
Governing authorities badgered and harassed to spend X amount of money on THIS instead of THAT? That is notoriously the case in the US!
Re typhoid: I've heard of people in past times who would drink nothing but beer or wine, precisely in order to avoid drinking water all too likely to be polluted.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it's the case with any form of government. We just see more of the shenannigans out in the open.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Very true! A recent example being the attempt by "Josip" and the Democrats to ram thru Congress their horrendous Build Back Badly bill. Fortunately, the GOP, with some help from the dissident Democrat Senator Joseph Manchin, managed to kill BBB.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Otto von Bismarck once remarked that politics were very much like sausage -- in both cases, you were often happier if you didn't know the ingredients too well.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! Because real politics among us humans is so often squalid. And I think Churchill said something very similar to what Bismarck commented re sausage making.
Ad astra! Sean
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