When everything was innocent

Who is the real me?

The last post was a summary of accomplishments I have observed in my lifetime by environmentalism. They have been impressive to say the least. The greatest accomplishment was instilling an awareness for our environment in individuals and businesses alike. Since it started, corporations have lead the way in clean up and enforcement. I worked with both independent companies and corporations in the oilfield. Corporations were far more responsible since their reputation influenced investors and stock prices. Just ask an environmentalist today to invest in BP or Enron. Events can happen but corporations are better equipped to handle them most of the time. Individuals vary in how responsible they are. It is no surprise that we have to adopt highways to clean them up because the few out of the many still throw things out their window.

There is always room for improvement and we should strive for it. There are current laws we need to be diligent toward enforcement. Fines are needed for the aforementioned litterers while factories that push the limits need pushed back. This is necessary with any laws we pass. But where is the money being spent today? Lets proceed on and look at what passes for environmentalism.

There is nothing like living in an area that stays green year round. Experiencing seasons is also a joy. The term “green” has taken on a life of its own and to be green has a broad meaning for many causes. But what is it about this color that makes it special? The green pigment is a means to power billions of factories that use sunlight to produce glucose. This is accomplished by stripping carbon from the air and combining it with hydrogen from water. Life on this planet depends on hydrocarbons. The trapped sunlight energy in hydrocarbons give us energy and are responsible for growth. When something dies, the carbon, hydrogen, sulfur and other materials slowly decay and enter back into the cycle. This is going on on a massive scale everywhere there is life. Mammals use a portion of this pent up energy in the form of food before it decays. You could say they interrupt the process and use the energy for themselves rather than letting it simply decay en masse.

When combustion occurs, decay is accelerated even more. Similar byproducts are put back into the cycle only it happens much faster. Every buried hydrocarbon was once a living thing that stripped carbon from the air and combined it with hydrogen from water. Unfortunately, it was buried and wasn’t able to enter back into the process. Combustion gives it that opportunity. It is a good thing and adds more raw material to the earth’s carbon cycle. Carbon dioxide makes up a mere .039 percent of our air.

Today’s money that should be used for our environment, wilderness and parks, is being diverted to chase the windmill of climate change. This movement is anti-green. Its adherents have a religious zeal as though questioning them puts the mark of the beast on practical people. It is insulting to those of us who have shown diligence in cleaning up our environment.

I remain committed to a clean environment but also to examining ideas rationally. The rationalization that we should follow along just in case they are right doesn’t fly on this site. This rationalization is used by religious groups; expecting us to follow their ideal just in case they are true. I also don’t want to bore those who are reading with tit for tat nonsense. In the next post we will examine a few principles since data can be skewed to support anything. This way we can all be better equipped to examine what others present.

The fire was strong as I remember 

The My heart needs answers

They both had restless hearts

With high expectation and hope  

In the recent past, I have engaged current environmentalists in discussions that turn into debates. Usually both sides agree to disagree. A better way to address the subject of the environment is to give a biography both of myself and the environmental movement that I have experienced.

Growing up in the sixties and seventies was an exciting time. Conventional wisdom was being challenged in numerous areas; the sexual revolution, Vietnam and the environmental movement to mention a few. Problems from industrial pollution were evident in the Great Lakes. Michigan was an industrial giant but it came at a cost. But it wasn’t just industry that was polluting, but every day people threw their garbage out the windows of their cars; we buried our own garbage in our back yards and dumped used oil, anti-freeze, paints and thinners on our dirt driveways. Some homes had a long black streak of oil on the road in front of their homes as dust control. Sewage was directly drained into rivers and lakes. We had a favorite lake to swim in and it became so nasty with sledge and bacteria that the community closed and abandoned the beach area. Municipalities dumped the city waste directly into the Great Lakes and the surrounding rivers. Local counties allowed oil companies to spread their waste on the dirt roads for dust control. The smell burned our noses when I was a kid. Smoke stacks billowed out smoke and the ash particles settled on the surrounding areas. This was considered a reasonable cost for advancing civilization. Better to run sewer in river than have thousands of outhouses and third world conditions in our cities.

In the early seventies, Richard Nixon signed the law that formed the EPA. This allowed federal law to enforce standards for our environment. There were laws made before and after but this formed a federal entity to help out the states. Taxes and costs were cheaper for states that had no standards so we needed something to make it the same for everyone. This way the negligent communities didn’t put the diligent ones out of business. Stacks could no longer produce smoke and every area had to submit plans for controlling waste. Anything that could make it into the watershed, representing our rivers and lakes, had to be purified first. I grew up with strong environmental opinions and surprisingly the answer for us then was nuclear power. My spare time was spent drawing their systems out and designing nuclear cars. I was a weird kid.

My dad helped build a nuclear plant right next to a big city in Michigan. The company was building it to be environmentally responsible. The Three Mile Island incident caused an outcry against the plant. It was abandoned, my dad lost his job and they turned it into a natural gas power plant years later. It was an expensive lesson for the ratepayers in our state and the company. But they were just trying to be responsible with the environment.

I entered the workforce in the oilfield. Just before I started, they could drill a well by just mixing mud and digging a pit. It was thought that the waste put on top of the ground would stay there. Ever since the forties, everything was just buried after the job was done. No one worried about ground water. We could just start drilling away. That had changed. We were mandated to put extra pipe as a shield, approved lined pits, waste removal and no oils of any kind could be dumped out to soak into the ground. The companies spent millions cleaning up old messes from the previous generation. The town I lived in received Superfund money to clean up an old factory area.

After this time, I saw clean roadways; rivers and lakes clean up; the air quality around industrial areas improved greatly. Lead was banned from fuels and car exhaust was cleaned up. Our environment was cleaned up exponentially and the sacrifices given by the environmental movement back then were worth it. Everywhere you go, from a body shop to any large industry, you will see awareness and a commitment to keep our environment clean. That’s where I have my roots and in the next blog I will address environmentalism today.

Two people are happy 

I won’t be one