If we're serious about
Environmental degradation and climate change
If we’re serious about climate change and environmental degradation:
Why aren’t there solar arrays on the roof of every government owned, financed, or rented building in the country? If the electricity produced did nothing other than support the HVAC and IT systems, it would be huge, and an array the size of the Pentagon might supply a fair portion of DC.
Why don’t all government and other tax supported purchasing contracts include a 50% or more post-consumer recycled content requirement? Like it, or not, government, at all levels, is the largest purchaser of almost every product in the country and requiring all of the paper, plastic, metal, and glass they buy to contain recycled materials would, initially, almost certainly exceed the current capacity of the industry but would drive demand and, in the not distant future, make recycled products as affordable as any other. Not to mention the reduction in trash and the energy used to produce all of these products from raw materials.
Why aren’t all commercial water customers required to treat their effluent so that the water that goes into the public system is as clean as or cleaner than what they took out? Not only is this not the case now, many of the major polluters get a discounted rate based on their immense usage while residential consumers pay for that and for the treatment of their sewage. We won’t even mention Nestle, Coke, and Pepsi who pay little or nothing for the water they withdraw from public sources and put into plastic bottles that provide even more pollution.
Why isn’t the first item in the Farm Bill an incentive for farmers to use regenerative technology and thereby reduce the need for fertilizers and pesticides which, after they do their primary job, run off the fields and pollute the water we all rely on? Regenerative farming can, pursued properly, produce yields equal to or better than the industrial methods we’ve come to rely on in the last 60 or 70 years, and the food in many cases tastes better and is more nutritious.
None of these have easy answers, and some of the changes will be painful and expensive in the short term but, if we don’t start making changes, the long-term pain will be worse; much, much worse.
Don’t know about you, but I’m tired of hearing about the trials and tribulations of the disgraced, defeated, former president and failed insurrectionist and, if Congress isn’t going to focus on what we elect them to do, we’ll all need to get busy and do it ourselves. This too will pass, not as quickly as we’d like, but the future is still so bright as to require transitional lenses (nobody wears shades any more, do they?)
Interesting.
I gotta say, I can’t help but wonder if the universe’s response (or at least that of any supposedly responsible parties in government) might be, “I’m sorry, Dave, but I can’t do that,” in the voice of HAL from 2001.
I think the root of the problem is that we’re just too fat, dumb, and happy. Or at least close enough for government work, as they say. Since most voters and associated others can still watch their sporting events of prime importance—I just heard someone in the back ground yell, “Hurry up, Mary, we gotta get over to Joe & Nancy’s before the game starts!”—and guzzle light (insults to) beer while sharing derogatory opinions about political opposition with their friends, prioritization, even amongst those who think that, yes, the world as we know it is changing drastically, the rate of change just isn’t high enough to spark panic, and without that, well, we’re just gonna have to wait ‘til after the game, when they’ll (probably) get back to us on that. Maybe.
I especially like the idea of making corporate/industrial water users pay real prices for all of what they’re getting. For now, I gotta move on and read part 2….
It begs the larger question of why our elected officials vote as they do. The studies done by Northwestern indicate that elected officials generally vote in ways that benefit their biggest donors rather than in ways to reflect the greatest good to the greatest number of their constituents.
That brings us back to the fundamental question of how our elections are financed. The theory is that if elections were publicly financed in a way that hid the identity of the donors, elected representatives might actually become more responsive to their constituents. And then many of these questions about why the federal government doesn't use its buying power to accelerate the movement to a greener economy might get answered. :)