A Teaching Moment
Sulfur dioxide is the principal contributor to acid rain, causing respiratory disorders, impairing visibility, harming the health of fish and wildlife, and degrading lakes and ponds. Research has shown lakes and streams in New England have been slow to recover from the effect of acid rain, compared to some in Wisconsin, New York and Pennsylvania. Acid rain brings with it mercury deposition, and together they cause tremendous damage to human health and the environment. Research by the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation recently identified nine suspected mercury hotspots in the northeastern U.S. and Canada. Harvard University economist Robert Stavins estimates about $1 billion per year has been saved in the United States by cleaning up since the Acid Rain Program went into effect.
Read more about this topic: Acid Rain Retirement Fund
Famous quotes containing the words teaching and/or moment:
“I have come to believe ... that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
“A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)