The other day I was off down in the woods and ran across this tire. Finding such things in the otherwise non-trashed environment angers me and it makes me sad. It was in an area that is often inundated with water after a heavy rain and I suspect washed in from a long way off. Someone upstream had used the creek or, one of the waterways leading into it, as a dumping ground for their trash. It may have been carried for miles before being deposited in this isolated place.
We often find other people's trash on our land. It is usually of the smaller variety such as plastic bottles and drink cans. Occasionally, though, we find larger items such as refrigerators and ice chests and tires. I think most of the smaller items come from the roadside ditches that are frequently the receptacle of plastic bottles, drink cups, fast food carryout bags and other sundry items that likely were released into the wild at high speeds as their previous owner traveled one of the county roads. When the rains come, the trash is washed into the many waterways that eventually lead to the creeks and rivers.
I was in school during the major wave of the environmental movement that swept our nation during the 60's and 70's. We learned that you shouldn't be a "litterbug." We were not often taught the reasons why we shouldn't litter, just that it was "bad" to do so. Perhaps that's where the movement failed. Most people don't realize that the cup they threw out, which is ostensibly biodegradable, may end up as micro-plastic in their water supply or, the fish they catch in the local lake which serves as the city water source. Maybe they just don't care.
One of the ways governmental bodies incorporated the anti-littering campaigns of those years into legislative action was to make littering carry stiff fines or, other penalties. That's great, but do you know anyone who was ever fined for littering? I'm sure it happens, but it isn't frequent or we would hear about it every day based on the volume of trash I see.
As I listen to the various "solutions" to what is now being called the "climate crisis," I hear proposals to penalize those who contribute to the issue. Fifty years after littering fines were instituted, we still have a littering problem. I wonder just how well the proposed penalties will work in curbing behavior that contributes to the anthropocentric view of global warming? In my opinion, the real solution is to educate rather than to regulate. Behavior changes when understanding of the consequences is clear.
I think there is no doubt that many behaviors of mankind are abusive of the planet. One of the most egregious is the paving over of productive land as urban and suburban sprawl gobbles the countryside. If our legislative bodies want to do something that will help, maybe they should look at population growth patterns in view of flooding issues, the loss of productive agricultural lands and the exploding infrastructure necessary to accommodate low-density housing.
[Aside] I follow an individual on Twitter who has ties to the United Nations Committee on Climate Change. He daily posts photos of the beautiful places he visits around Europe. His jet travel alone contributes more in a year to releasing sequestered carbon into the atmosphere than most people will contribute in a lifetime. Yet, he does get to see some beautiful places that most of us will never have the opportunity to see. Should I envy him? or, should I condemn him as a hypocrite? I choose to do neither. I just hope he someday might see that the image he portrays in his posts is not the one he asks in the behavior of others. Sometime I would love to have the opportunity to show him the world in which I live.
I am a strong proponent of the free market. I don't like regulation or, legislation, therefore, I would suggest that behavior be based on incentives through the market with things like tax credits which are currently used for conservation easements. We need to ask if there are ways to incorporate similar strategies in directing growth so that the environmental impacts are minimized. As we do so, we need to keep in mind the potential negative economic impacts that such incentives may carry. If initiatives penalize some current landowners while rewarding others, the result will be increased corruption. Perhaps it would be possible to use a tax structure that would reward developers for including green spaces and flood mitigation strategies within a development and penalizing them for not doing so. Those penalties could then be used as offsets to those landowners who own sensitive areas that would be penalized if developed. What is needed is a reward system that would encourage the preservation of the sensitive area.
I'm just trying to reason through possible mechanisms to drive good behavior through the market rather than strictly through a penalty system that likely won't work anyway. There are lots of people out there with much more experience and training in this area than I will ever have; I hope they will step to the forefront and bring a common sense approach that will prevent the likes of a "Green New Deal" from taking hold.
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