4 ms·
Maybe I'm just a little fussy about words. The Washington Post article, to which the submission linked, hedges its position a little too much for my liking. >
by nonrandomstring 4y ago
Maybe I'm just a little fussy about words.
The Washington Post article, to which the submission linked, hedges
its position a little too much for my liking.
> Scientists have speculated that factors beyond deliberate dumping
could be at play. The mercury could have settled in the river’s
sediment due to past pollution, before being stirred up by recent
dredging. Europe’s historic heat wave this summer could also be to
blame. The continent is facing what is potentially its worst drought
in 500 years; low water levels and high temperatures could be
choking off oxygen supplies to the river’s aquatic life and
worsening existing pollution.
Really? Let's see what the instruments say before speculation please
"scientists".
Somehow I'm feeling that's an unnecessary or over-charitable degree of
balance and restraint. Calling something a "catastrophe", instead of
an "act", has softer implications that don't quite seem right here to
me.
- lioeters 4y agoI even saw the phrase "natural disaster" being used in another article. Perhaps it's mis-translated, and they mean "man-made ecological disaster". But there's someone out there who is responsible, who made the decision to dump huge amounts of toxic industrial waste into the water, and that is a serious crime of massive scale. (EDIT: On second thought, this could have been an accident.) It permanently poisoned the river for its surrounding ecosystem and communities.
- ThePadawan 4y agoI am German and had to look on Wikipedia what the consensus of the term "Naturkatastrophe" (literally "natural catastrophe") is. Wikipedia suggests a Naturkatastrophe is any disaster where the destructive force is nature, regardless of the cause. There is the more specific "Umweltkatastrophe" ("ecological catastrophe") that apparently requires direct human cause. I can imagine this being a mistranslation, but personally also find these terms incredibly nitpicky.
- lioeters 4y agoThank you for clarification. Humanity is part of nature, so I suppose technically all man-made ecological disasters are "natural". But it feels like evading responsiblity, when we've knowingly caused the disaster over years and decades. I know only a little bit of German language, but I did see this headline: Bundesumweltministerin Lemke warnt: „Hier bahnt sich eine Umweltkatastrophe an“ That seems to give a more accurate description, that we're responsible for what's happening.