Star Trek on strip mining, recycling, ocean dumping, biospheres
Toxic waste dumps, ocean dumping
Another form of pollution that Next Generation spoke out against is that caused by toxic waste dumps and ocean dumping. In the episode "Final Mission", Riker & Co. encounter a derlict space barge that has been drifting for years. Unfortunately it is drifting right into a populated planet's orbit and the Enterprise has to tow it away, at great personal risk to the crew and the ship.
The analogy to ocean dumping couldn't be clearer. When we dump waste at sea, many times it washes up on our shores and threatens us. That's why for years in the 1980's beaches in New Jersey had to be closed. Even today there are many water bodies that aren't safe to swim in. The Hudson River, for example, is cleaner than it has been in years, and yet there is still a layer of PCB's on the river floor which will lay there, contaminated, for years to come. There are also toxic waste sites around the country that are filled with contaminated wastes, sometimes radioactive, like the barge in "Final Mission", which threaten people and the environment.
Star Trek's message? Clean up waste sites, and don't haphazardously dispose of such substances in the first place.
Mining, Strip mining
In "Home Soil", the Enterprise discovers a research lab on a supposedly deserted planet that is drilling into the soil to conduct scientific experiments. But the drilling is lowering the water table and killing crystalline lifeforms who depend on the water. Star Trek is analogizing to the environmental damage caused by strip mining, which kills plants and leaves a barren habitat that animals cannot survive in.
We see the much more disastrous consequences of mining in Star Trek VI, when overmining causes a moon to blow up and decimate the ecology of the Klingon homeworld, forcing the Klingons to sue for peace with the Federation. What Star Trek is saying here is that we should not rush to exploit natural resources without fully considering the costs to the environment.
Replicators & Recycling
While there has been no specific episode about recycling, the presence and use of the replicators in numerous episodes show Star Trek's reliance on recycling. The replicators work by creating items, usually food or clothing, from the basic building blocks of matter. No irreplacable natural resources are wasted. Furthermore, in the case of food, when a meal is finished the entire remainder of the meal--food, plates and all--can be put back into the replicator for dissassembly into their subatomic components, which then can be reassembled back into food the next time the replicator is needed. Except for the energy loss involved in the use of the replicators, there is no material waste, thus making the replicators very efficient recycling tools.
Kooks in the Biosphere: A step too far
While Star Trek in general and the Next Generation in particular have been supportive of envirnomental issues, there was one episode which seemed to indicate that environmentalism seemed to go to far. In "The Masterpiece Society" a colony of people live in a perfectly balanced and sealed ecosystem. However, their "perfect" society is threatened by outside forces and it takes the "imperfect" crew of the Enterprise to save them. Although Counselor Troi admires their society and even has sex with their leader, it is obvious that Star Trek is taking a dim view of the concept of an ecologically balanced biosphere that is fit for permanent human habitation.
It's been tried already. A project called "Biosphere 2" tried to put human beings in a sealed environment for long periods of time to see if they could survive in a closed system with carefully selected plants and animals. It failed, miserably, and the people who participated in the Biosphere 2 project were viewed as unrealistic dreamers and cultists. What Star Trek is saying about biosphere enthusiasts is that they are unrealistic dreamers and cultists. While Star Trek is very pro-environment, it draws the line at sealing oneself off in a biosphere for extended periods of time.
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