... the real death toll has been put at between 6,000 and 8,000 ...
... 10,000 of the group's members had officially been declared invalids ... ... In 1993 we had a record number of invalidity cases...
... According to studies carried out abroad and in Russia, a new wave of cancers and blood ailments can be expected to strike victims within the next five years... Another nuclear accident in the 1950s in the Soviet Union, was far worse than Chernobyl. It was hushed up then, by Stalin. Close your eyes and recreate the pictures of the burning Kuwaiti oil wells. That too was the action of governments. is far greater, severe and more extensive than done by private enterprise. Capitalism gets the blame for pollution. It is a bum rap. Compared to China, former USSR, former east bloc countries, North Korea and Cuba, capitalism created a paradise, a workers paradise and an environmental paradise.
Let us reflect on nature and causes of industrial pollution. It is we who cause pollution. When we demand power, cars, clothes, travel we simultaneously demand pollution. making factories pollution free and making car exhausts free from polluting fumes, costs money. Are we willing to pay an extra Rs. 5,000, Rs. 10,000, Rs. 50,000 for the privilege of breathing air which is now 10 per cent less polluted? The International herald Tribune of November 28, 1991, carried an article headlined "US Clean Air Bid Spells Costlier Gas" and pointed out that "the six cents a gallon spent on cleaner gasoline will bring the cost of removing an extra ton of hydrocarbons from the air to about $ 10,000 - roughly ten times the per-ton cost of removing the first 95 per cent from urban air... Unless the law is modified, gasoline will have to be reformulated again in the year 2000 at a cost of about 15 cents a gallon." Smith and Jeffreys say in Environmental Vision: "Recently, a federal court declared that the fuel efficiency requirement for automobiles was directly related to increased highway injuries and fatalities because it resulted in the production of smaller, lighter vehicles that are inherently less safe than larger, heavier models. In such situations, individuals have a paramount right to make critical personal choices for themselves and their families." Heavy handed government intervention, taking over factories, and signing 50 years non development treaties is not the solution.
It does not mean that we have no recourse when environmental damage results from private actions. Objectively defined laws and allowing heavy damages where injury to third parties is proved are effective. In the USA, the cost of cleaning up plus penalties to Exxon for the Valdez oil spill in Alaska was well over US$ 1 billion (Rs. 3,100 crore). Such damages Rakesh Wadhwa
Page 129