Documentary on Pollution in India - TG4 tonight 9:35

by Markos Wed Aug 27, 2003 17:08

This was shown a couple of months back and is an excellent documentary. India's most sacred river is treated like an open sewer despite being a place of pilgrimage and source of drinking water for millions. The water table around Varanasi is full of dysentery and toxins.

The campaign to solve this problem is spearheaded by a coalition of a Hindu religious group and an academic scientific pressure group joining forces.

Their solution is elegant as it is environmentally sustainable -- to build a massive bio-treatment installation on disused state lands, down river from Varanasi (Banaras). This would operate much like our native reed bed systems except with algae and microorganisms native to India. The water output from such a system would be clean enough for fish to live in, even before it re-entered the river. Like here, however, this elegant solution is met with red tape, apathy and vested interests.

The lessons are increasingly applicable here, where cracked septic tanks and run-offs from slurried fields pollute the waters and endanger the ecosystem. Aer Rianta pump their raw sewage into the Shannon estuary from the airport and all the Restaurants and Pubs of Temple Bar continue to flush their raw effluent into the Liffey. For the summer months, the citizens of Dublin have been treated to the smell of their own ordure as the shiny new treatment plant in Ringsend releases its stench into the air of the capital.

Imagine the pressure put on government if the Catholic Church and other religious groups decided that to pollute the environment was morally wrong, as the Hindus have done in Varanasi. There is plenty of theological precedent there within our tradition of Celtic Christianity which traditionally was very close to nature. How foresightful and rehabilitative that would be for the Irish church, winning it new respect and creating a force to be reckoned with for change on environmental policy in this country. Its about time they got something right, focused on the positive and moved away from their unhealthy obsession with sexuality

A quick search reveals this Catholic environmental group active on the web:
http://conservation.catholic.org/

by Anonymous Wed Aug 27, 2003 16:23

For nightowls, and those with video recorders!:-

The Channel 4 documentary, 'Congo Killing Fields' will be reshown on Saturday 30th August at 03.25a.m. (early morning).