The sky as a ‘sewer’
Society treats the sky as an “open sewer,” pumping carbon waste into the air much as it used to dump bodily waste into waterways, and with the same results. People are getting sick, Al Gore, the former vice president and climate activist, told a packed Memorial Church crowd on Wednesday. Gore ’69 compared the climate crisis to 19th century cholera epidemics, including one in London where the outbreak was traced to a single water pump whose source was infected by feces containing the cholera bacterium. The understanding of disease transmission that resulted prompted changes in handling human waste. Dumping carbon waste into the atmosphere needs curbing, Gore said. The climate change resulting from carbon dumping practices harms human health, Gore said. Not only are people adversely affected by droughts, heat waves, and stronger storms, but a warming earth will see expansion of the range of disease-carrying insects, bacteria, and parasites, Gore said....