19A026 Environmental Care by Jim Davies, 6/25/2019    

In the government's Youth Indoctrination System, the kiddies are taught to take good care of our surroundings, to "be green." It's a very important part of the curriculum, because it softens them up for more and more control later in life over what they can and can not do in the open air.

So a vey basic lesson in this subject must be, not to toss away litter. If hiking, bury it or take it out of the government park. (An aside: once when driving to the North of the magnificent White Mountains in New Hampshire, which have long been reserved as a National Park, I happened upon a sign advertising a gas station or café located a couple of hundred yards further on. It said "turn right opposite the government park." That's what ornery NH residents used to call it. Not so much today, alas.)

Despite this heavy indoctrination, alas the youth of this neighborhood persist in tossing their empty bottles and cans out of the car window when they cruise (or whatever) along it on a Friday or Saturday night. Each time I go walking, I see it soiling the scenery. Once I paused by a cop running a radar trap, and asked what they were doing to stop the spoliation; the answer was, nothing except "if we see them, we'll arrest them." Fat chance.

But last month, a neighbor I'd not met before enlightened me. She had actually taken the trouble to collect some of the discarded bottles, ready for recycling, and told me that the kids toss them out of the car "because they don't want them inside it if a cop should stop them." I didn't know, but there's a law here to forbid open containers. If there's a "traffic stop" and the cop sees an open bottle, even an empty one, he may presume you've been drinking and use it as an excuse for more drastic action, like a search.

So the existence of their open-container law is the reason that bottles and cans spoil the environment! I never knew that. An unintended consequence, perhaps, but that's what can happen, when government people write laws.

At the same time as it indoctrinates all on Keeping Green and preserving the beauty of the hills, government sometimes directly and deliberately spoils them, even despite protests from nature lovers. There's a mountain I know - again part of a NH State Park - which, prior to 1995, had but one structure on the summit, small enough to be mistaken at a distance for a clump of trees. It's a fire watch tower, and hikers are welcome to climb the steps and observe the rolling hills of central New Hampshire, with the resident watchman there to point out the highlights. But then the State Police intervened. This much larger tower was built and protests were ignored; its purpose was not even to do something useful like relay TV or cell phone signals but to enable statewide police communications; a forest of antennae is bolted to it. So if someone breaks the law in Nashua but high-tails it to Berlin, cops in the former can have those in the latter prepare him a welcome. Maybe it's happened that way; but nowadays, a mere quarter century later, better technology has made it redundant. But they will leave it there anyway, marring the view. Or if they ever do demolish it, they will make sure we foot the bill and it won't come cheap.

Another example of deliberate government damage to the environment - and far worse - took place in 1991, by the ruler of Iraq. When it became clear that he would lose the war for Kuwait, he opened the faucets so that crude oil would flow into the Persian Gulf; ruining the shores and slaughtering thousands of gulls and other wild life. He then set fire to the hundreds of oil wells in the country and withdrew his army; the dense black smoke from them polluted the atmosphere for weeks to come. Sometimes (Exxon, BP...) oil spills by accident. This was done by government, and on purpose.

Oh, but not our government, some might say. Oh, really. Who was it who started that war?

There is no cure for government, no hope of reform. It has to go, in total. There will be clean-up needed, when it's gone; but that will form a business opportunity.