In actuality, pollution has not been cleaned up in places like California in such a way as to really resolve the ecological crisis. What has happened is that pollutants do not go directly into the atmosphere any longer, but are collected at the smokestack and then deposited in "toxic dumps", which are in working-class or poor neighborhoods. Indian reservations' biggest industry, after gambling casinos, is as collection sites for the poisons big corporations produce. Scientists like Barry Commoner urge that the industrial process be retooled in such a way as to eliminate toxic byproducts *within* the industrial process. Rachel's Weekly comments on Commoner's "Making Peace with the Planet":
"Commoner argues...that we have tried to cure the symptoms instead of trying to prevent the disease. Once pollution is created, Commoner argues, there is little that can be done about it. Take, for example, the chemical industry. Under the federal Community Right to Know law, the chemical industry has reported that it emits 20 billion pounds of toxic chemicals annually into the environment. Based on these data, the Congress's Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) has estimated that the actual yearly release of toxic chemicals into the environment is close to 400 billion pounds. Of this, only 1% is destroyed, which is the only way to prevent these substances from threatening living things. If the other 99% of chemical industry wastes were to be destroyed, the cost would be $20 billion annually. But the entire profits of the chemical industry in recent years has been only $2 billion per year, so obviously the chemical industry cannot afford to destroy its own wastes. This is why the chemical industry still releases 99% of its wastes to the environment and must continue to do so. Commoner's point: once pollution has been created, it is too expensive to control. The only way to avoid damage from pollution is to avoid creating it in the first place: pollution prevention is the only way. ('If you don't put something into the environment, it isn't there,' says Commoner, with characteristic simplicity.)"
Finally, the biggest ecological crisis we are facing has nothing to do with "pollution" as such. Global warming is not being caused by toxins, but through the "normal" process of private transportation. As long as the auto industry finds profit in 4-wheel drive, off the road vehicles, which were responsiblejust by themselves for a 12% increase in the greenhouse effect last year, we face a catastrophe which was foreshadowed by the 10,000 deaths in Central America in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch.
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)