There was a meeting of the [Sullivan County] Legislature this morning to discuss the impending “garbage calamity,” which will occur in two to three years, when the landfill that we are currently trucking our garbage to closes. 

The legislature is looking into a solution that would involve untried technology, unknown side effects of air and water pollution, water usage and the possible release of other very toxic chemicals into our environment. 

The Hughes Energy proposal is new, unproven technology, and perhaps there is a place for it in our future. But until we KNOW, we should, I believe, focus on the solutions that we know: mandatory residential and commercial recycling, rapid phase-out of single-use plastics, expanding and updating the 1982 bottle bill, further development of local (and personal) composting systems and putting pressure on our state and federal representatives to pass the Extended Producer Responsibility Act. This will help put the solution back in the court of the folks who created it in the first place.

As we move more and more toward electric vehicles, the fossil fuel industry will become more and more vigorous in creating more and more plastic to maintain its bottom lines. Over the last few years, there has been an explosion of plastic-producing factories all over the country and the world, but clustered around “industrial alleys” and areas of poverty that become victims of environmental injustice.

People, in general, are incredibly lax about their consumption and disposal of difficult substances. That needs to change! Individuals and businesses could do a great deal more, and if it takes financial pressure, then that’s what we need to do.

Kathie Aberman
Liberty, NY

Human folly and greed have brought us to this point

This autumn has been one of the most beautiful we can remember. It is commented upon by almost everyone we meet. It’s as if Nature is sending us all a powerful message: that this world is irreplaceable. Everything we love is contained within this benevolent, all-encompassing, living presence.

It doesn’t bear thinking about how the folly of men is poised at this very moment to wipe it all away. Not just through the slow death of climate change, but with the immediacy of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, in the hands of men and institutions who can well be described as psychopathic.

There’s a tidy narrative being pushed by our monied media that this is all the fault of a single man, who melodramatically just decided one day to be bad. As if there will be some consolation in having a convenient villain to blame in the last moments, as the beauty of the earth melts before our eyes. That’s a propagandistic fantasy.

The truth is we have lost control of the forces that drive our own government. It is not a conspiracy theory to know that it has been conscious policy, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, to drive a wedge between Russia and Ukraine, to encircle our one-time powerful nemesis with Western-friendly republics, that will contain its hypothetical expansion. And for just as long, there have been critical voices warning that this is dangerous over-reach on our part that would inevitably lead to disaster.

I guess I could be accused of conspiracy-think when I point out that our current situation of danger and uncertainty has been an absolute boon to two of the most powerful interest groups in the country—weapons manufacturers and the fossil fuel industry, which manage to get their people into top positions in both Republican and Democratic administrations. Is it wrong to think that the influence bought through political cash is what has brought us to their happy state and peril for the rest of us?

The course for those of us who cherish life and nature has to be first to wrench our minds away from the we’re-the-good-guys/they’re-the-bad-guys narrative that the paid media keeps us daily enthralled to. The war in Ukraine can and must be ended immediately through negotiations, before it careens wildly out of anyone’s control. These negotiations have to include the permanent dismantling of nuclear stockpiles, an integral factor in Russia’s initial rationale for invasion, which would end the threat of annihilation once and for all.

The essence of the American experiment in democracy is self-governance. It is anathema to freedom to leave our fate in the hands of powerful forces, whose interests are not our own. This abdication of control is manifest in issue after issue, from healthcare to reproductive rights. For the people to become masters of their own destinies, we need serious and respectful dialogue and a focus on common interests across political divides. We can start with what a beautiful day it is.

Doug Rogers
Long Eddy, NY