Well, guess what. The good news is that it Earth Day is still here. The better news is that we are still here too, which wasn’t necessarily a sure thing back during the cold war.
Today, twelve thousand trees will be planted throughout the Upper Peninsula by dozens of religious congregations. Tree-planting seems to be a theme of this Earth Day; yesterday, the Student Conservation Association planted trees in a muddy marsh along Maryland’s Anacostia River. They had some help.
Among the volunteers was a guy whose wife grabbed the biggest sapling. “Look how big our tree is, honey,“ she crowed. Her husband, the President of the United States, was happy to let her have it. He planted a smaller tree with purple flowers.
For the last eight years, it often seemed like Earth Day itself was an act of defiance against a government that seemed frozen in the ice of its own ideological indifference, if not outright hostility, to the environment. That’s clearly not the case any more.
The Environmental Protection Agency has reversed a Bush-era decision and has issued the common-sense ruling that greenhouse gases are in fact hazardous to human health. That isn’t the same as regulating them, but it lays the groundwork.
The burden of proof seems to be shifting from the environmentalists to the polluters. There was a little-noticed but very welcome decision in Michigan the other day. One of the state’s most notorious polluters is the vast Vreba-Hoff factory dairy farms in Lenawee and Hillsdale counties in Southern Michigan.
They have been cited over and over again for the amount of liquid manure they produce and pump into nearby fields. They now owe $223,500 in fines for this. Yet Vreba-Hoff had the chutzpah to say they couldn’t pay unless they were allowed to expand their operation and add more cows! This week, Ingham County circuit judge told Vreba-Hoff to pay up within a month.
Yet though there’s a welcome shift in the climate, we face some new problems when it comes to protecting the earth.
President Obama is thought of as being pro-environment, and he is. But that has its downside. Some will be tempted to say, ‘well, since our government is now on the right side, I don’t have to worry so much.“ That couldn’t be more wrong. All Washington can do is give us the ability to be better stewards of this earth.
What may be a bigger problem is money. Michigan Is broke, and the governor is trying to turn over responsibility for wetlands protection to the feds, who aren’t set up to do that.
You’ll see more of that sort of thing as the budget battles continue. We are a much more environmentally conscious state than on that first Earth Day long ago. So let’s make sure we don’t slip back into the primordial and political ooze.
Leonidas Mi - Local Citizens Meeting Tomorrow 7pm to fight ANOTHER VREBA-HOFF CAFO!!!
Please educate yourself! Please, show your kids what it means to stand up for something.
Thursday, April 23, Leonidas, Mi Grange Hall - Mapquest the town and show up - you can't miss the grange hall and all the cars.
Local Teacher, farmers, neighbors create group to fight back
http://spea-swmich.org/index.htm
This could be a precedent setting case, for the first time in DEQ history they denied a discharge permit - but Vreba-Hoff wouldn't quit and eventually they got approval - tomorrows meeting is to show our state senators, congress, that we won't tolerate irresponsible corporate greed when it comes to our water supply.
See what happened to Hudson, MI when they let a vreba-hoff cafo in www.nocafos.org
You'll be amazed at the amount of risk Michigan will put it's citizens in for another Job.
We're talking about 60million gallons of antibiotic and hormone laced concentrated manure - spread throughout the county, by the company with the states worst environmental record, by an operator whose only experience is with under 200 cows in Germany on a pasture.
This will be built right next to bear creak - a tributary of the St. Joe. which travels 150 miles into In.
Please take action and come to our meeting, make it your earth day promise.
Posted by: jason | April 22, 2009 at 02:41 PM
From the National Review Online: "The more people understand about 'Global Warming,' the less they care..."
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzI1MDg4MDc1NjRhMzMzODM0YmZhYjBiNDE3MDkwMGI=
Posted by: Anonymous | April 22, 2009 at 03:14 PM