While enjoying a walk today, the air was hazy due to a new pollution, Canadian wildfires. We have stopped importing lumber and started importing smoke from them instead.

As a young kid traveling back and forth from the Detroit area, we always gagged while passing Midland. Dow had the air polluted with a terrible chemical smell that burned your eyes and throat. Once beautiful rivers throughout the state had been neglected as they filled with tires, chemicals and debris that could be seen while driving by. Litter decorated the highways. It was common to throw bottles and debris out car windows. This became an increasing problem as fast food became popular. The industrial age had reached a peak and our generation took it on ourselves to clean up the mess. Nixon passed the Clean Air Act and the EPA was formed to make national standards. We needed national standards so dirty industrial states like Michigan would have no advantage over over states that cleaned up their environment. 

There are three areas a true environmental movement addresses. First is cleaning the air, water and land through environmental laws. There were grants and a superfund to help when it was too expensive for poor communities to deal with messes from defunct businesses. Second is to restore natural land to its pristine beauty for the enjoyment of future generations of humans and wildlife. Third is to continue with the efficient use of farmland so we can be the breadbasket of the world without expanding further into our pristine lands. 

Now I keep track of business spill plans, enjoy long walks in parks, hiking trails and walkways along beautiful rivers. We know our drinking water has been tested to comply with limits set by the EPA and EAGLE. We cleaned up dumping sites for chemicals and store them safely. No more oil dumped on roads. There are fines for littering and groups who clean the roadways. Compared to the early Dow days we are living in absolute luxury.

Today the singers that lamented about paving paradise in song, celebrated arbor day by planting trees and fed the world, have to endure seeing our productive carefully contoured farms covered in windmills and solar panels. And the perpetrators call them farms, an insult to those who actually raised crops to feed people. Today testing soil and rotating crops is foreign to students in schools that began with agricultural names. 

I was always interested in power generation and drew nuclear plants as a kid. My dad was actually building one. My wife and I married early and I wanted to put a windmill and solar panels on our house. When I did the research, Michigan was one of the worse states for them to be profitable since we are frequently overcast and the lakes temper the winds. Energy has been a lifetime study on my part. We should use a hunger index based in bushels of corn and crunch the data verses power production. I have the numbers and they will shock you… next time.