Chapter 3 a spring confusion

one Compared with people's self-confidence, I may be a little pessimistic.And, quite inopportunely, a thriving spring in the American South. Spring is here again, and the birds are singing brightly.Reminds me of Rachel Carson's book, that one.The story of Carson has long been known to everyone. A weak woman defeated the huge "chemical empire", which proved that DDT endangered the survival of birds and also destroyed the health and survival of human beings, which eventually led to the ban of DDT production in the United States. The inventor of DDT, once won the Nobel Prize.Today, when people mentioned this matter, most of their tone implied that it was a stain on the award committee.Fortunately, it seems that ignorant and evil forces have fallen one after another, and the concept of environmental protection has begun.The ending is like a Cinderella fairy tale.

However, the prince and Cinderella did not live happily ever after. In front of us is not a fairy tale world. DDT is an insecticide.It was invented and used in the first place to save forest crops from pests and to save lives.One of the most important targets it kills is mosquitoes, which transmit potentially deadly malaria and various diseases.From the time DDT was introduced until it was banned in the 1970s, it saved at least five million lives.I think back many years ago, I was deeply moved by Carson’s story, but I forgot to ask: What about malaria if DDT is stopped? Malaria cases are on the rise.Malaria kills 2.5 million people a year today, 90 percent of them in Africa.There, 1.5 million children die each year from various mosquito-borne diseases, and DDT has been revived in many countries.In the eyes of children in these countries, DDT is not a devil in a black cloak, but an angel with white wings.

Well-meaning environmental organizations never imagined that the pressure they exerted to promote the global ban on DDT would even be seen by poor countries as the arrogance of rich countries.Because switching to any new type of insecticide that is considered safer will cost five or even ten times the price.They can't afford it at all. If the problem only comes down to money, it may be easier to handle.The real question is, are the new drugs safe? In developed countries, after the use of DDT was discontinued, scientists invented alternative medicines.People believe that science can solve problems because they believe in the ability of human beings to understand and conquer nature.However, whether everyone admits it or not, human abilities are actually limited.In fact, every new drug is produced, and a comprehensive understanding of its safety is always slow.For example, the imitation estrogen, which is widely used to replace DDT, has been found to be harmful to the reproduction of humans and wild animals after 20 years, and the total number of male sperm has dropped absurdly by a large margin.

So, back to using DDT?This goes back to the old question that Carson had raised forty years ago: what about the environmental poisons that endanger human existence? To say that what we are facing is a "dilemma" would be an understatement. two The plight of the group stems from our own plight.Human nature is inherently weak.Humans have the instinct to survive and avoid disaster. Recently, there was a piece of news that fire ants were found in Hong Kong.Although it has been poisoned several times, it still cannot stop the spread of fire ants in Hong Kong.I don't know if Hong Kong residents take this news seriously.They may not know what fire ants are.I watched the news and shook my head, fire ants are the norm in the American South.

We live in the country, and every spring, every household needs to buy at least two kinds of insecticides, one for the very poisonous wasps, and the other for the fire ants that are everywhere.They are very dangerous to people with allergies. Three years ago, our seventy-something old neighbor Jamie was stung by a wasp.He figured he could at least stick to the clinic five minutes away and drive right away.As a result, shortly after he was on the road, the bee venom broke out and he suddenly fell into a coma.Jamie's car lost control, ran off the road, and rolled into a ditch with the car.Fortunately, it was only a car crash, but the person was rescued.

When we first moved here, we didn't know the dangers at all. It wasn't until we also had the thrill of bee stings and ant bites, and ambulance emergency treatment after shock, that we really became an American countryman.The lesson of the first lesson is to buy insecticides in spring to save the most urgent need. U.S. authorities warn that 69 million households use various pesticides.Every spring, I will feel very guilty and think, how can I, who is not without awareness of environmental protection, stand in this rank? It is difficult to escape from such a predicament.Pesticides are only a drop in the bucket of environmental problems.The weakness of human nature is far more than survival. In addition to avoiding disasters, people still seek profit.

Today, people's introspection on the weakness of American Indians stays at the political level.An important reason for the sharp decline in American Indians that year was the exchange itself.European immigrants brought germs that had never existed in the Americas, and caused a large number of Indians who had no immunity to it to die.Today, communication remains a significant cause of environmental disaster.Just like the fire ants in North America, they built tall ant nests on the hillsides of Hong Kong this year. We will review the quarantine system at the political level, although we know that its effect is only a drop in the bucket.It is impossible for us to examine "communication" because that is an insurmountable longing latent in us.We are happy to review it on a political level.Not only is there room for improvement at this level, but also because we can obtain moral satisfaction.When it comes to the weakness of human nature itself, we have little room for improvement, and we may force ourselves into the dangerous path of moral imbalance.

I just need to ask myself, air pollution is the most intuitive pollution.So, will I give up the convenience of cars, boats and even airplanes because of this?In order to prevent hydropower plants from harming the ecology, will I give up lights, washing machines, refrigerators, and unplug all electrical appliances at home?Or, after the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, still convinced myself that nuclear power plants must be a safe source of power? Most of the problems we face come from the insurmountable human nature itself. three The acceleration of environmental degradation does not seem to imply our incompetence.Rather, it coincides with the expansion of our capabilities.The most prominent thing is technology. To use a common saying, technology is "advancing by leaps and bounds", and the speed of updating is accelerating every minute.

Humans are born with the desire to create, to climb the peak, to be "faster, higher, and stronger", and to be more convenient and comfortable.So after which step is taken, will you lose your sense of proportion?Although there are constant calls for people to exercise restraint, the strengths and weaknesses of human nature are sometimes just two sides of the same coin; the good and evil fruits created by people often go hand in hand, and they are unable to abandon the evil and only promote the good. What used to be scattered is now able to concentrate; what used to be small-scale is now merged one after another.When we rejoice in the convenience of e-mail, cities, countries, and the world have merged into host computers of some large computers.

As a result, as if in response to a wizard's spell, the birthwife of powerful technology nurtures super-strong individuals while giving birth to a fragile society.A few people, spending a thousand dollars to buy air tickets, can start a war that causes human and economic losses that exceed the Pearl Harbor incident; a low-pollution nuclear bomb that is not so difficult to obtain may drive a metropolis into an empty city; The invasion of the virus may paralyze the core departments of a country.The improvement of technology has finally made a qualitative change magically completed: the war capability has been transferred from the national army to individuals silently.And the economic lifeline of a big country is becoming more and more life-threatening, and it is only maintained in the financial centers of a few metropolises. If it is triggered, the whole country will be in chaos.

In the past, it was the madness of a country or, like the Nazis, of a political group that had to be prevented from destructive disasters.What needs to be guarded against now may be just a certain individual's madness.We say that if we all treat each other well, we can avoid this evil.For such a naive assertion, I think, the first person to chuckle aside must be a novelist—whether society can put an end to madness and focus on the study of "people" Chinese writers may have the most say.The complexity of people brings the richness of society, and it is also a fertile field that literary creators like to see. It grows good and evil, grievances, love and hatred, and thus harvests happiness and anger, sorrow and joy, peace and riots.People may hope to build a robot society with unanimous smiles, but unfortunately the God of the human world has arranged this way: some people will be crazy in the end.We are so excited by the rapid development of technology that we can only close our eyes and not look at it; and both parties engaged in creation and destruction have thus obtained the same opportunity to show their talents. I'm afraid, there is a cliff ahead, and we can't go back. We don't even have time to look back, and ideas are changing and running around at an unprecedented speed.In the past, our concepts have been gradually precipitated, gradually washed, gradually revised and evolved under the slow brushing of the river of time.Today, we are thrown from one swift vortex to another rapid vortex, and it is already difficult to distinguish north from south and east from east. I asked myself, where is the support point for my feet in the whirling tide?How much room do I have for moral confidence?How much can I improve myself?I know that everyone is just an insignificant individual.At the same time, however, it can be a meaningful, random object of investigation.I seem to be answering a sociological questionnaire, facing the questions, but full of doubts. The birds in spring are still calling, and I may never find a satisfactory answer.