xxx The Environmental Debate
and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemical compounds used to moderate heat in electric transform-
ers, have accumulated in the environment, causing serious problems for wildlife and humans.
In the process of producing and using the materials, machines, and foods that we employ in our
everyday lives, industrial plants and individuals generate wastes, ranging from gases (including carbon
dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide) to various solid wastes (including such toxic elements
as lead, cadmium, and mercury). These wastes may be carried into the water we drink, the air we
breathe, or absorbed by the animals and plants we eat. Some of these wastes are dangerous pollutants
that can have harmful effects at a variety of levels, from the cellular to an ecosystem. Although the
release of pollutants may be the result of ignorance (such as the lead released from leaded gasoline,
which was widely used until the 1970s) or accidents (such as chemical and oil spills), some is the result
of blatant illegal dumping of known toxic substances. Because of the expense and effort of proper
disposal of toxic wastes, toxic substances often have been deliberately disposed of illegally, and the
resultant toxic waste sites can be found across the United States. The cost of dealing with contamina-
tion from improperly discarded toxic and radioactive substances is enormous compared to that for
proper disposal.
Efforts to remedy pollution resulting from what are designated as “hazardous waste sites” have not
been entirely successful despite the passage of laws and huge expenditures of funds. Conflicts have arisen
between those who claim that a particular hazardous waste site is the cause of a high incidence of an
illness in an area and those who dispute the claim and view the costly cleanup as unnecessary.
The difficulty of disposing of radioactive waste is at the core of the nation’s reluctance to expand the
use of nuclear energy. While the federal government claims that the much studied and discussed Yucca
Mountain Repository in Nevada will be a safe site for storing radioactive waste for a million years, many
questions remain unanswered.
FORESTS, WILDERNESS, AND WILDLIFE
When the first European settlers arrived, most of North America was covered with trees. A vast decidu-
ous forest stretched from the East Coast to the Mississippi, and another massive forest extended west
from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast. Only the arid Southwest, the desert lands, and the Great
Plains were without sizable forests. Although Native Americans had made changes to original growth
forests by burning and cutting the forest in some places and clearing the understory in others, much
of the original forest was still intact when the colonists arrived. Today, most of the original forest is gone.
As the population of the United States increased, large segments of the original forests were cut down to
make way for farms and to provide wood for fuel and construction material.
In much of the eastern part of the United States, forests are returning for several reasons. Wood is no
longer used for fuel on a substantial level; wood for construction is increasingly coming from managed
forests; and the number of farms and farmers has decreased, allowing farmland to lie fallow and return
to forest. Although forested lands have increased in recent years, the nature of the forest has changed.
Where once there were thousands of acres of uninterrupted forest, now we see acres of forest segmented
by roads and fields.
In some sections of the country, timber companies harvest trees from naturally growing forests on
lands owned primarily by the federal government. These corporations have tended to harvest the lumber
in the most efficient and cheapest way—by cutting all the trees in a given area. In other parts of the coun-
try, growing trees to obtain wood for construction or for the production of paper has become much like
farming corn or wheat. Landowners, who are often large corporations, plant thousands of acres with a