Water pollution can hurt our ability to use water in our homes, for recreation, and in commerce. It also harms other forms of life. We work to protect water in all its forms: on the ground, underground, and coming out of the tap.
The mythical figure of Cassandra and the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah were fated to be ignored until it was too late to avoid the dire things they foretold. The same disbelief has greeted the increasingly frequent and rigorous warnings in our time.
One of the earliest, for example, was issued by the Council on Environmental Quality in the Carter administration and published in 1980 as the Global 2000 Report (Barney, 1980).
The authors cataloged in great detail the scientific evidence about declining ecosystems, climate change, and species loss, along with measures necessary to move the country toward sustainability. But we chose to evade reality and sought refuge in the slogan that it was ‚“morning in America again”.
Three decades later it is twilight, and we live with the ecological, economic, political, and social consequences of our own making.