As to your first question, if all pollution stopped today, it would take something on the order of 30 to 60 years depending on the location for things to stop getting worse and start getting better. I don't know how long it would take for things to clean up completely. But I suspect that for all practical purposes, the timescale is comparable to "never."

Of course it should be kept in mind that even the water from most of our polluted aquifers is still more drinkable than most surface freshwater and probably wouldn't hurt you even if you were to drink it untreated (knock-on-wood).

To your second question, that rather depends on who is the government at the moment and which part of the government we're talking about.

Venstre - the big brother in the current government - is for the purpose of this discussion firmly installed in the pocket of the agribiz.

The Conservatives - the baby brother in the government - has several distinct camps (one of the more amusing spectacles in Danish politics over the last twenty years has been the slow-motion disintegration of the Conservative party. But I digress). Part of the party is in the pocket of big bizniz and is thus aligned with agribiz on principle. Another part of the party wants to greenwash big bizniz in general and is prepared to sell the agribiz down the river (after all, agribiz voters got to Venstre not the Conservatives...). A third wing (the biggest one, I suspect) is prepared to sell both the agribiz and the groundwater down the river to whomever gives them the biggest tax downsizing for the rich.

The Social Democrats - the biggest opposition party - used to have a fairly rigorous environmental policy. I am not sure what their policy is today. In fact, I am not sure that the Social Democrats do policies anymore.

The Popular Party - the government's parliamentary support - likes to make noises about environmental policy, but I don't think they actually have one. They'll probably not sell the environment as far down the river as Venstre or the Conservatives, thought. At least not as long as someone is watching them with a camera.

The rest of the parties have pretty reality-based environmental policies. Unfortunately, the rest of the parties are in opposition.

But what we have on our side is a considerable bureaucratic inertia in the government system. Denmark has a tradition of not replacing civil servants wholesale (unlike - say - the US), and the Fogh government hasn't exactly expanded the ministry for the environment, so a lot of the regulators that do the day-to-day oversight and memo writing are hold-overs from the Auken era. To the government's considerable chagrin.

Further, there are a lot of semi-official government advisers, experts and "usual suspects" who are sitting in more or less tenured positions in our universities - even if the government bothered, they couldn't touch them directly. And their attempt to set up their own belief tank with friendly "experts" - on the government dime, no less - got off on such a bad start (their first chairman was Lomborg...) that they have been - shall we say - less than energetic since then.

All in all, Danish environmental policy looks a lot like an episode of "Yes, Prime Minister." Which is, of course, sad for the state of Danish democracy. But it is very, very good for the state of the Danish environment.

- Jake

Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam