Celebrate!

Saturday, Japan is shutting down the last nuclear power generating station. Unlike the US, their licensing process includes an annual review in which public opinion is taken into account. Here, in America, we license our nuclear facilities for twenty years, often rubber stamping their permits with callous disregard for public opinion. When TMI (Three Mile Island) blew, our bucolic world in rural Pennsylvania was dosed with rad waste and the cover up continues today. Officials still claim that there was no reason to worry although massive quantities of radioactive material had been spewing from the plant for over two weeks before the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) was notified of a problem at the site. Allowing corporate interests to police themselves has not worked in Japan, nor has it worked here in the US. We just have a better handle on how to squelch public opinion. The last nuclear protest that I participated in was "overseen" by at least three dozen police from several jurisdictions. There were also intimidating and threatening gestures and actions from a handful of local residents who screamed insults and slogans that made my skin crawl. hearing of an entire nation banning together to practice true enlightened action in the face of evil and unconscionable danger makes this world citizen proud.

There is little that can be said about the ways we have chosen to do business in our neck of the woods. When the public began to understand that nuke waste is dangerous for tens of thousands of years and requires armed guards around the depots where it is stored, basically forever, the phrase "nuclear energy will be too cheap to meter." began to be bandied about. I'm not sure about you, but we still have a meter on our house. When increases in cancer were understood to be the result of being dosed with fallout, it was immediately compared to the radiation you would receive from sun tanning (which was thought to be "healthy" back then) or (for those with a desire to enter the "jet set") the amounts of radiation you would receive from taking a trans-Atlantic flight. If public opinion hovered just above fifty percent against, the next straw was added to the back of the public. Many who live in the townships that do have nuke facilities pay no property tax. Who wouldn't like that? The fact that no one will ever want to buy your house if it is in the shadow of a hazardous waste production facility, even knowing that they would pay no taxes on the property for life, makes no difference to those who have been convinced of both the need for and the safety of this insane way of making electricity.

I have readers in Japan, for them I say Bless You! Their public opinion has pushed the hand of government further toward sanity in one brief year than hundreds of thousands of protesters have done in the US in my fifty year lifetime! Even when what we warned about came true, the nuclear disarmament crowd was marginalized and the nuclear power opposition was painted as unpatriotic Communists (when that was the worst word in our political dictionary) or Socialists today. Caring about everyone as much as we care about ourselves is antithetical to capitalistic values I guess. I thought that we were a country of freedom but that our freedoms ended where they imposed on the noses of our neighbors. Not so in the case of generating electricity. We allow our freedom to flip a switch to impact hundreds of generations who have not yet been born. They will inherit the waste that has been created today with no means of paying back the bitter cost of stupidity with which we saddle them with our waste. Even as a child, I understood the odd disconnect between those who advocated for nuclear energy production and the facts. for all the touting of nuclear energy as "carbon-neutral" that claim is bogus. I have written of this before, so if you understand, jump ahead a paragraph or two. The litany of carbon-fueled activities and processes that are required to produce electricity through nukes is almost unfathomable. whether the Japanese understand it or not, they have taken a bigger step toward sustainability than they could possibly imagine.

First of all, massive amounts of fuel (carbon-based) need to be spent securing title to land that is "appropriate" for siting a facility that will be dangerous, works best near an inexhaustible source of water and requires sturdy bedrock to support the massive weight of a reactor core and the attendant containment facilities. Ideally, it would be near points of use, to keep transmission line costs down, then the construction requires hundreds of thousands of tons of limestone to be baked in kilns (also using carbon based fuel) for the cement that holds concrete together. Conventional fuels (read, carbon releasing) are pumped in to the facility in the form of backhoes, bulldozers, trucks, rock crushing and screening operations and you also need to keep the lights on in the design and drafting facilities. flying your representatives around to secure permits and lobby for leniency amongst the regulating agencies expends more jet fuel, etc. Riding herd on public opinion has a very real cost as well. Going to several dozen public hearings, putting out ad campaigns and negotiating settlements to placate local and regional opposition can require many resources and also hinge upon cheap carbon-based energy.

Then, there is the cost of fuel for the process. Naturally occurring "ore" is getting less and less available and what we have is at ever lower concentrations. Massive mining operations are required to get the raw material for fueling up a nuclear generating station. Once mined, again using carbon based energy, the ore must be crushed, refined, concentrated and transported from facility to facility to accomplish each of these critical steps. The next part requires even more energy and is called enrichment. This is what we are so mad at Iran for doing today. Massive centrifuges must be made to spin for years to extract enriched fuel for the process. These centrifuges are best energized by electricity, produced mostly from fossil fuel in our country. Finally the fuel needs to be pelletized and transported to the reactor.

When I was a child, I envisioned the entire process as similar to winding up a rubber band powered balsa wood airplane. The only difference is that the order of magnitude is much, much greater. The propeller is so much harder to spin that we scar the land as we spin it. We hemorrhage massive amounts of fuel in winding up the mechanism. We scar communities and create massive monolithic concrete structures that must eventually be disposed of as hazardous waste. Even during the period of "free flight" there are risks and costs that make the whole process seem more like a bad acid trip than I can express in mere words. I have always understood the threat from these facilities as equal to, if not greater than, the threat of nuclear weapons. Like the person driving while texting, you never know when their destructive power will be unleashed. At least with weaponry, you have to decide when and where to unleash the deadly power, accidents can happen any time, any place. Add to this the long-term consequence of producing extremely long-lived waste and you can see the whole house of cards come crumbling down.

What we were never told is that the entire charade began because we needed some of that waste to refine again, rendering even more of the landscape inhospitable for hundreds of generations, to get weapons grade material. Instead of just enjoying the "free flight" during the years of electricity generation, the whole game was to make the ultimate weapon. The gods and goddesses are smiling on the land of the rising sun. Today, tomorrow and for centuries to come we must continue to celebrate Japan's good sense and compassion. Not only for their people, but for the people of the entire planet! At their peak, the (I believe) 54 nuclear generating stations (I have also heard the number fifty) provided 1/3 of Japan's demand for electricity. In spite of this fact, the people of Japan decided to stop throwing money and their future down the rat hole of this dangerous and short-sighted form of electricity generation. The rest of the world needs to follow their lead and develop alternative and less destructive means of meeting our needs. Conservation, efficiency improvements and alternative methods of production are readily available to us all and we need to begin spinning the wheel in the directions we want to go, not backward to a time of decadent ignorance and the immorality of subsidizing dangerous and deadly industries that leave our children with unrivaled debt.

We all need to celebrate the wisdom with which Japan is pursuing sustainability. We also need to keep pressure on our own leaders to eliminate this relic of cold war thinking. No one is better off under a system that puts our nation and the rest of the planet under threat of catastrophe. Radiation from Japan is already here. Even though the government is trying to downplay the facts, we need to understand that the massive bolus of radiation that continues to leave Japan is not "less dangerous" because we are finding isotopes with short half lives. In some ways, that is indicating that the problems are far worse than we can imagine. Short half life materials, detectable over a year later indicate even greater and more concentrated plumes entering the atmosphere than we had calculated. spread the word, we have finally come full circle in the nuclear age. I personally find it somewhat ironic that the first place on earth to be decimated by nuclear attack has gone through a process that led them to fully embrace the devilish technology and then commit to ending the nuclear nightmare once and for all in just two or three short generations. This is the blink of an eye in the time span of radioactive waste and needs to be celebrated by every man woman and child on the planet!

Happy Earthday!

A recent poll found that fully one quarter of us believe that the environmental improvements that we have made since the first Earthday have been inadequate. We still have tens of thousands of people dying prematurely from environmental contamination such as fly ash from coal burning, photochemical smog and clouds of toxic dust and fumes from foundries, asphalt and even fumes from commercial products and their packaging. The first tier of environmental protection revolved around the lowest hanging fruit as it were. If we could put another layer of filtration, or perhaps something as minor as a finer screen on the point sources that abounded a few decades ago, we could claim that we were doing all that we could to clean up our mess. In fact, the most hazardous contaminants often are small enough that our immune systems are unable to detect them and therefore, unable to clear them from our bodies. Some poisonous compounds are integrated into our bodies in such a way as to cause their damage over the long term, some actually skipping a generation before causing harm to our children.

The long list of people who said that they wanted a cleaner environment has been dwarfed by the billions of dollars that have been spent by those who wish to continue polluting for the profit that it means to them. How this can be justified as a "responsibility to stockholders", I may never know, but even today, I saw a commercial that was touting fracking as "less polluting" than other methods of energy production. Conoco Phillips, the company that implied, through this morning's commercial, that our children would have jobs if we continue to extract oil at higher and higher cost, wasting vast amounts of energy to pump high pressure steam far below the surface to extract the last residues of natural gas from rock that has locked it away for millennea, completely neglected to posit that there are other, less damaging ways to meet our needs through conservation, efficiency improvements and rethinking our dependence on fossil fuel. I know that it is their business to bring to the market oil and natural gas, but they should not be allowed to use public airwaves to lie to millions of people for the purpose of fattening their wallets. Those who have had the freedom to risk the lives of others for profit will not relinquish that right without a fight. Just as the child who is used to getting their way, the corporations and businesses that have been spoiled in this way will throw tantrums each and every time that they are urged to clean up their act. These corporate giants do not care who they hurt, they have proven that by their actions.

The economic terrorism that corporate business leaders employ in each and every case, is treason. Their commitment to inaction, and willingness to pay fines rather than do the right thing show that they are happy to operate outside existing law because they can. There has never been a study proving that effective environmental regulation leads to reduction of jobs, wages, profits or economic activity. In fact, when government regulations have reduced environmental hazards, it has increased jobs, created even higher profits (through waste reduction), created more higher skill jobs and bolstered economic activity. Then, why the morass between what we know is necessary and what industry is willing to do? The common knowledge that most parents come to find is operating on an international level with corporations, virtually worldwide. The more you bend and sacrifice to "get along" with a tyrant, the more often and more violently they will protest conventions of civility. Spoiled brat is a term that has come to be known because we all have seen them. It is completely possible to stop bad behavior, but yet, many parents think that by giving in, "peace" will be arrived at sooner and at lower "cost". What stops this tragic cycle is when a parent, or in this case the government, (which is, after all, the people) stops ameliorating the spoiled brat and makes them tow the line with regard to socially acceptable behavior, developing awareness of the rights of others and in the most tragic cases, developing the listening skills required to understand the needs of others, rather than only attending to their own.

The din that has erupted from the general public has been toned down, padded if you will, through the inaction of decades, leniency on the part of regulators, an extremely well-funded opposition to real and meaningful change and the contempt that polluting industries continue to have for our right to clean soil,  air and water. I continue to encourage my readers to check out the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). This is a national network that requires polluters to self report their emissions and document them with the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). This tool allows the average citizen to type in their zip code or location and find out who is pumping what into the air around where they live. It was an eye opener for me and I assume others will be equally interested in who the corporate outlaws are in their neighborhoods. We humans often have to carry an inter-generational legacy that we are ashamed of. In the case of how we treat our environment, we have the power to set things right for the generations that follow, but it will require taking measures that have not been used yet. We can no longer afford to sit idly by, waiting for the world to change. We need to turn our voices and wallets to the task of changing the world from the grass roots up. If the government refuses to protect us from foes who are killing off the population from within, then we have to step outside the realm of their influence and change things without their help.

Dollars seem to be the only language that corporations understand. When you get wind of who the sources of toxic compounds in your community are, use your voice to educate others about the real and despicable actions of those bad neighbors. If there were a pedophile living next door to a local single mother of two, who worked dawn to dusk every day to keep her family off welfare, you would let her know, right? The same holds true for the devilish money-grubbers who seek to make their profits by sacrificing our health and our welfare. We need to let others know, through social media, heart-felt discussions with our loved-ones and even with people we don't know that well. This behavior is wrong and must not be tolerated. With the spoiled child, a mere look might be enough to stop their bad behavior. Corporations only have eyes for cash, so as their profits fall and eventually dry up, the vast pools of money that they have used to convince us that we cannot get along without their bad behavior will dry up as well. This Earthday, make it your business to know who is operating in your community, recognize the spreaders of poison for what they are. There was a time when we were not even treated as well as slaves. Those who profit from our pain and the premature loss of our loved ones need to bow out. We are the only ones with the power to change what we spend our dollars on. Do not treat your decisions lightly, every dollar spent or invested supports a cascading series of events that allows each and every thing we use to be made and come to us. This goes for energy, products, foods and even our sources of entertainment. Learn as much as you can about this complex world and act according to your conscience, this will improve the environment more than government regulations. It will help more than you can measure, perhaps more than you can imagine. It may help just enough to save your life, the life of someone you love, or maybe even the life of a stranger. We are well past the point of cleaning up trash and telling one another that this is enough, or all we can hope for. Now is the time to remove the bad actors, stand up for our right to clean soil, air and water, and to invest our own time in making lifestyles that keep our hard-earned dollars out of the hands of rogues and scallywags. 

Hard Rain

My time on Earth would have been far less exquisite if not for the experience, I had today at the very end of my forty -eighth year, hearing this phenomenal Bob Dylan piece. When I was young, I was raised by what I thought to be the most cynical people imaginable. In their infinite, but supposed wisdom, they cordoned off vast areas of human experience as bourgeoisie pap, mediated fluff or politically motivated distraction. Some of their guidance was of course helpful, but other parts of their lexicon were filled with their own brand of vapid slogan shouting and half-truth. One example was my stepfather, who frequently talked about free love and really meant subjugation of as many females as possible. Much to my delight, my mother was commiserating with a young woman at the Laundromat one day about her suspicions that her husband, John, was sleeping around. See love is only free when given without the attachment of sex. Her new-found friend said that her man was married and would not think of leaving his wife for her. Strangely, her man’s name was John as well, and she asked, Andries? Well, if there had been super glue back in the sixties, it may have gotten used on his genitals that night!

All this said, there were times that I wanted to learn things that the adults in my life wanted me protected from and just as often there were things I needed sheltering from that I had to learn to deal with sooner rather than later. The first Earthday celebration was off limits because my parents said that it was all just a media ploy to distract people from the injustice being perpetrated in Southeast Asia. I was not allowed to watch any media coverage of the war because john had been accosted by newsmen while he was serving in that war, asked to act like his unit was being fired upon and to shoot off a few rounds for the camera.

Bob Dylan fell into the category of things they suspected as manufactured for the masses by the establishment. I don’t think either of my parents were educated enough to understand much of what Dylan wrote, but even more disturbing was their absolute vehemence about his inability to sing. I heard the same tripe about Woody Guthrie, Roy Orbison and Elvis, although for some reason Arlo Guthrie and Frank Zappa made the cut in our house. The stinging in my eyes that brought tears welling up out of nowhere at the sound of Hard Rain came not from the fact that Dylan can’t sing, but perhaps because he can’t sing, but was willing to enter the recording studio anyway. When each of us has something to say, the vast majority would rather hold their tongue, let someone else take center stage, or just fight the urge to speak, or sing, back down inside, hiding their light under a bushel basket. For many of these same silent ones, the prevailing sentiment of their insular sub-culture fills the void that their own ideas have left in public discourse. Ban the bomb sounds catchier than stop poisoning my children, free love sounds better than I’m a fuck machine and so on.

I understand that we all must do the best we can with what we are given, but the time has come for each of us to begin thinking for ourselves, not jumping on either the politically expedient bandwagon or the let’s overthrow the government  one either. Surely there are those who would lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, many are powerful men with evil intent, but it is time to realize that by shirking our own responsibilities, we are cheating ourselves of a life of richness and beauty beyond words.

Where Do They Find The "Experts"?

WARNING: If you care, this post is especially upsetting. If you feel vulnerable, hungry, upset already or tired, DO NOT READ IT! If however, you need to get your juices flowing or a bit of inspiration & ammunition for tomorrow's WALK FOR A NUCLEAR-FREE FUTURE, April 23rd 2011, between the Kewaunee nuclear facility and the Point Beach reactor site, read on! I'm sure that I'm not the only one feeling this level of frustration.

Today, Earthday was in the news, pretty much all day. I normally listen to Wisconsin Public Radio and they were not much different. Having participated in every Earthday since it's inception, I thought that I was reasonably aware of the environmental issues that confront us, the history and ethical dilemmas that are most often trotted out to stop real or meaningful change from taking place. The "experts" that I heard were apologists for the nuclear industry, folks encouraged by the "additional" natural gas reserves that are becoming available through hydrofracking and people who are still banging the tired old drum that global warming is still unproven and that oil dependence is a necessary evil. I used to consider WPR to be one of the best public broadcast services in the country but if this is the best they can do, then they don't deserve to be funded with tax dollars. Now, we have a whole year to prepare for next year's Earthday shows. Do you think we could put together a set of programs by then that would cover environmental issues from an ecological perspective? Corporate interests rule the air 365 days each year. Especially here in Wisconsin, where the idea of Earthday was first dreamed up, we should at least be able to hear educated and inspired programming about the dire consequences of continuing to pollute from those who are educated, truthful and committed to changing the future for the better.

We have illegal dumping, hazardous waste being injected into the ground, permit violations, polluting industries, unregulated emissions of dangerous chemicals, deaths occurring from fly ash (a waste product from burning coal) fugitive emissions from coating and plating factories and paint shops, and virtual ignorance about all of these issues on the part of the general public, yet the programming today was focused on how rosy a situation we find ourselves in. My experience is either quite different or there is a separate United States, where these purported experts reside, hiding out there somewhere. My city of about 100,000 lies at the bottom of a sixty-mile-long valley that holds over one million individuals. We have smog, though the locals don't like to call it that. We have hazardous air alerts. During these times, strenuous work is supposed to be avoided but most laborers are granted no reprieve by their employers.  Our fish are tainted and the rivers that flow through town are dangerous to touch during the heat of summer. Admittedly, there have been some improvements, but our governor has been to town to see what he can do to stop the further clean up of the river because it is "too costly" to dredge the toxic compounds out of the sediments. Industries continue to benefit from the despoiling of our "commons" and the public is expected to tow the line and continue to pay taxes that support business while public health is degraded, programs are cut back for the truly needy and the far right continues to turn their backs on any and all social responsibility. The cowboy up mentality is coming back to defy logic and proportion.

Gone are the days when unbridled individualism ruled the high country. Nowadays, if we all took a shit down by the creek, we would soon find that we were living along  a shit river. Perhaps I'm expecting too much. Maybe the environmental movement has been infiltrated by corporate apologists. I just can't imagine how we could let them rule the air on the one day each year we are supposed to be getting ourselves educated about what we can do as individuals, families, neighborhoods and communities to solve the pressing problems that daily threaten our health and welfare. I got more and more angry throughout the day and tried my best to forgive the utter lack of comprehensive knowledge evidenced by the litany of guests. Late in the day, one of the hosts tried to make the case that because many of the environmental issues were so complex, that this made them hard to solve. in defense of the guest, the woman responded that no, this is not the case. She made the point that all ecological issues converge on a single point. We all have to eat and in the realm of food production we can find the intersection of virtually every other issue that one can think of. Feeding ourselves, and making sure the food is wholesome and nutritional ,can go a long way to healing the planet. The simplicity of the issues was also mentioned. You don't need to know what a part per billion is to know that some things cause sickness and death and other things do not. Of course you can kill yourself with salt, but that is a vital nutrient. there is not benefit that can come from eating PCB, dioxins or car "piddle". Even if you give a toxic substance a cute name, it can't transform it into something wholesome.

Ko-towing to the wealthy has allowed many of the most insidious problems to increase exponentially. Waiting for the world to change might be a catchy song title, but it is no way to save a planet. Making excuses for continuing to degrade the air, water and soils can only lead to death and pain, injury, plummeting property values and dislocation. The recent changes in policies that could have reduced pollution, operating costs and utility prices, as well as providing opportunities for living more sustainably on the Earth have been a living nightmare from which we may never wake up. The issues that are most on the minds of people who make every day Earthday were barely on the table for discussion today and one wonders why? It seemed to me that the non-experts had done more for the planet than those who were cluttering up the airwaves with pablum and ameliorating public outrage at our lack of commitment to these essential issues. Perhaps it is too much to ask that we should try. In a country that allows doctors to kill over 200,000 individuals per year with medical mistakes, a land that wages war at will against imagined foes, a country that has imprisoned half the adult male population of a single "ethnic" group because of ill-conceived drug policy, expecting a rational approach to healing the environment is too much to ask. It just gets a little disappointing when one hears the same rhetoric about how "business will be negatively impacted" if we make them exhibit a conscience, how we have to pick between jobs or the environment or that we would lose market share in the world economy if we started doing the right things. The extremely wealthy can still afford to buy a bit of heaven. as long as they have their millions to spend on their retreats, the rest of us can just live in the hazardous waste sites that are our cities. If I could swim in our river, eat the fish or breathe the air without feeling ill, perhaps I would consider the problems solved, but I'm coming on to fifty and have never enjoyed all of these things where I have lived. In the old days, I could go on vacation a few times each year and at least get a taste of parts of the world that were still relatively clean and unspoiled. Now, my vacations are far less frequent and the return only reminds me of how little I want to breathe the air, drink the water and sometimes I wonder if I should even grow my own food here under the plume of poison that wafts over my house. One company alone, in my city, admits to discharging over a million pounds of toxic compounds into our air. If we are doing so well, why can't people living in Green Bay, Wisconsin catch a break? 

Ten Days Left to Plan Local Action

This year there are two Earthdays. The forty-year old one on April 22 was a resounding success. Earthweek activities this spring involved millions of Americans in grassroots action and programs designed to build relationships between humans and the environment, educate the public about sustainabuility and foster attitudes of solidarity within the ecological movement. Now, with our elected leaders letting people, as well as the planet down, environmental groups from around the country are calling for a show of public support for proven sustainable practices that protect the earth and her people.
Corporate interests have once again superseded our need for clean air and water. This bad decision on the part of our "leaders" must not be allowed to stand. The events scheduled for October Tenth range from tree planting to trash clean up and from environmental networking and educational events to ecologically themed movie nights. Across the country people are being asked to make their ecological actions known through the press, television and radio. To maximize our efforts, send out a press release beforehand, calling attention to the recently abandoned cap and trade bill that would have, for the first time, assigned a true cost to pollution. Let the media know that we are still waiting for our leaders to reign in polluters and finally address these pressing problems.
It has been said that when the people lead, the leaders will follow. We need to hold those in Congress who are responsible for killing environmental laws accountable. With the mid-term elections just five weeks away, it is time to show the public through a demonstration, a national day of support for Mother Earth and her ecological systems, that we are ready to finally have our right to clean air and water upheld by our elected officials. Forty years ago, many were cynical about whether demanding positive ecological change would make any difference at all. My own parents did not allow me to attend events that first Earthday. Luckily, I still felt that I was part of it in my own way. This October Tenth we are starting a new tradition. Second Earthday, which is not as much about standing up for our right to clean air and water, but pointing out the need to, once again, become leaders in creating environmentally sustainable systems that assure our children and their children a chance to prosper without destroying the environment.
ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. will be planting trees as usual. Day trips to plant trees will be followed by an evening screening of an environmentally themed movie. Their commitment to living lightly on the Earth remains unchanged. It has taken their group just six years to plant over seventy thousand native trees across Northeast Wisconsin. Before they organized formally it had taken them over fifteen years to plant their first sixty-thousand native trees. They are a small local non-profit that operates with all-volunteer staff. If you would like to donate to their tree planting efforts, you can now use Paypal their account is: tnsaladino42@hotmail.com.
No effort should go unnoticed and for that to happen we all need to write local media outlets so that they can cover the story. This national day of action is meant to show our legislators that we are serious about the need to pass legislation that attaches realistic costs to pollution. The river that flows past my house is too dirty to swim in, the fish that live in it are not safe to eat. Wetlands in the headwaters are being drained and filled to make way for more fossil fuel guzzling vehicles, for planting more genetically modified corn and soybeans, and for three thousand square foot drywall castles and the Earth is already out of balance. Ask around or check local listings about actions in your area through 350.org. If you can find nothing planned, take it upon yourself to do something for Mother Earth this October Tenth. The Earth and her people will thank you!

Earthday at 40

I remember my parents not allowing me to attend the first Earthday. They said it was part of the conspiracy to placate the masses and distract the public from what was really going on. The river in our backyard was a colloidal suspension, (like mixing milk and orange juice, but it was green) After forty years, dredging toxic compounds that accumulated all those years ago has begun. The fish are still not safe to eat, nor the waters to swim. I have seen a vast improvement in the look, but not the smell of our river. As a child I wondered how large must the Great Lakes be, to be able to handle the incredible volume of toxic waste that flowed past our door.

In 1987, I got a chance to ride bicycle around all five Great Lakes and all I can say is that they are not very big! Even now the water that we drink contains prescription drugs. We didn't even know about the possibility of these contaminants being able to "make it" into the environment back then. I was able to get the message of sustainability , though we called it living better for less back then, to about ten million people. Six million on a single day through CBC radio during a morning commute. Cheap and simple ways to "Go Green" like substituting baking soda for chlorine tainted cleansers, combining trips, carpooling or bicycling rather than firing up the old fossil fuel burner unnecessarily. Back then, a family could save about seven thousand dollars per year by going from two cars down to one.

The air when I was a child was terrible, and is no better today, in spite of effectively cutting new lead emissions, sulfur dioxide and dry cleaning compounds many other contaminants have increased. We did score a noteworthy victory when the local electric generating station wanted to raise their smoke stack to "protect local air quality". Public interest groups said in court that the air farther away should not be negatively impacted to keep our air cleaner, so the stack raising project was put on hold. The courts interpreted the clean air act rules to mean that pollution should be reduced, not just diluted and to this day, the stack remains unfinished.

Burning of fossil fuels has increased exponentially at times in the last forty years. Each time we increase mileage standards, we increase the fleet size to offset any ecological gains. Infrastructure improvements have created millions more miles upon which people can now drive. Current government incentives go to larger and larger interests who more and more people drive farther to patronize.

Soils are still under attack. Mega-farm agribusiness is not concerned at all about naturally stable and ecologically diverse micro-climates. Drive through any agricultural land and you will see the stark reality that nearly every farmer has sterilized the soils and tilled wet and /or erosion prone areas to the point of having only dirt where a complex relationship of organisms once existed.

I truly hope that in forty more years my children won't say "Things are as bad as they ever were." At least when the first Earthday happened, there were still old timers who had not given up the old ways of farming that respected the earth, understood stewardship and at least rotated crops and left fallow land that "needed a rest." Farmers are under such pressure today that they can't possibly do what is best for their land. It would cost billions to reestablish hedgerows, intersperse forest cover to protect the fields from the ravages of wind and extremes of hot and cold as well as wet and dry.

We have had forty years to make a difference, but have mostly chosen to look the other way. If you are a child reading this, hold your parents to a higher standard. If nothing changes, protest like we did against the Vietnam War. If you are adults, hold your elected officials to the task of cleaning up the mess, stabilizing the cities and allowing local areas to support themselves. No one is served when the cities collapse. Before the next Wal-mart is subsidized, we need to make sure the urban core has decent food, water, shelter and air. If that means mass transit, so be it. If that means high speed rail, lets step up. We are living in a country whose people were told that the Erie Canal was just a pipe dream, The Mississippi could not be tamed, that they would never be able to lay railroad track over the Rockies, that a Trans-Atlantic cable was impossible, and other things that could have limited us, or what we could do. If anyone can reclaim a mutually beneficial relationship with Earth, it only makes sense that it should be us.

We have been lucky to have people looking out for us through the last forty years, but the lack of effective action to reign in the destruction of our planet has been staggering. Our efforts need to be more than redoubled. Effective action is much more than fair-trade coffee and reuse-able shopping bags. It lies in a complex matrix of relationships with one another, with community and with resources. As we learned as children about the water cycle, we need to look at the cycles of capital, of energy, of nutrients and of all the gifts that the natural world provides each discreet location. The give back needs to be reintegrated into our daily lives. That is what enriches community and raises our quality of life while reducing costs.