Pity the canary in the coal mine. A small, fragile non-volunteer, which breathes at a faster rate, is offered as sacrifice to alert miners that the air is dangerously contaminated.
Infants breathe three times the amount of air for their body weight as do adults. Our children are now our canaries.
Every time fuels are burned, whether in a power plant or an internal combustion engine, the poisonous chemicals and particles of the exhaust are spewed into the air around us. Like village excrement dumped into our surrounding moat, that waste does not just disappear, but collects in the surrounding air we all must breathe.
If you picture our Earth (8,000 miles in diameter) as a peach, the breathable portion of our atmosphere is only about 5 miles deep, much thinner than the fuzz on that peach. Our atmosphere just keeps accumulating the poisons from all of our combustion. This pollution is slowly killing all of us by shortened life spans, lung disease, heart disease, cancer and climate change.
We must commit to use energy sparingly and to demand clean renewable sources. Our addiction to fossil fuel energy is relentlessly killing our children, our canaries.
William E. Cosgrove, Cottonwood Heights
