Last week, on April 22nd, I was on my way to the Earth Day celebration at Bayview Park and I had a revelation.  As you will see,  the source was not exactly a parting of the clouds and a booming voice from on high.

I was stopped at a traffic light and I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, in the car next to me were three teenagers.  The girl in the back was smoking a cigarette.  As I usually do, I watched to see what she was going to do with her cigarette butt.  Well, sure enough, the young girl took a last drag and flicked it out the window into the street between our cars.  I, being the Supreme Green Lizard of Environmental Vengeance (please do not take that as anything but a joke), rolled down my window and said to her, “Do you know where that cigarette butt goes?”

She looked at me for the briefest moment in kind of a dumb way, gave me a one-finger salute and suggested how I might entertain myself for the rest of the day.  She rolled up her window and they sped off.

In trying to salvage some part of my dignity, I tried to make some sense of what had just happened.  It occurred to me that some people care, but don’t know.  Other people know, but don’t care and some people don’t know and don’t care.

My revelation was that the vast majority of people sadly either know and don’t care or don’t know and don’t care.  It is only when our actions come back to haunt us that we suddenly see the light and begin to care enough to change.  It is like that bright light of knowledge that comes shining through in a hurricane when the electricity is shut off or when a car crashes into the aqueduct and our water goes off, or when suddenly the usage of petroleum drives the price of gasoline to historic highs and we start thinking about getting a Smart Car.

If anyone reading this column, or anyone else for that matter, doesn’t know that we, as the human race, and our earth, as an island in space, are in crisis then you are simply not paying attention.  Let me say again, something I said in my first column that bears repeating.

Since the beginning of time, man has essentially consumed what is known as current solar energy.  That is to say, we consumed pretty much what could be grown in a current season and used wood for fuel.  During this time of current solar energy use, a stable population ranged from between 500 million to one billion people on the entire earth.  With the discovery of oil on a vast scale and the subsequent proliferation of the petro-chemical industry, the earth’s population began an upward climb that paralleled the use of petroleum.  Petroleum gave us the ability to create better fertilizers and thus grow more food.  It also gave us the ability to transport it farther distances.  Thus the growth of petroleum use and population have grown in tandem since approximately 1922 with a population of 1.9 billion.  In 1930, world population increased to 3 billion people and today there are more than 6.5 billion people.  The fact is, however, that petroleum production, as we know it, peaked in about 1979 and has been going down at a rate of approximately 1.5% per year, however, population continues to grow and is slated to as much as double in approximately 40 years.  If there was ever concrete proof that we are out of sync with our natural environment, this is it.

So, if you know and don’t care, I guess all I can say is shame on you.  If you care but don’t know, then start paying attention and get involved.  If you don’t know and don’t care, then God have mercy on us all.

Speaking Of Revelations
The reason I was going to Earth Day at Bayview Park was to unveil the Recycling Thermometer now in place.  We can talk the talk but now can we walk the walk?  I’m pretty excited about this new symbol of just how serious we are about our environment.  A lot of people come up and say to me they “really appreciate what you do.”  If you really mean it, and I’m sure you did when you said it, then let’s start moving that green line up.  What is interesting is that, according to the city, if we can achieve a rate of just 30%, we will save $1,000,000 in fees!!!  If that doesn’t get sucked up as general revenue and expenses, we make this whole recycling effort a self-sustaining, self-perpetuating prospect.  Wouldn’t that be a novelty?

Chris Belland
Love Your Island Co-Chair