Keep America Beautiful

So this past Saturday I headed out to the unincorporated part of Peoria County for a family reunion and enjoyed the drive in the great weather. That was until I noticed in the cornfields, butted up against the myriad of new construction from city annexation, an unsightly mess of trash that had blown in from said new construction.

I was born and raised in Peoria and have been a city dweller all my life. While I could never live on a farm, I still respect what farmers do; as Les Nesman at WKRP believes, it’s the oldest profession. I wish these contractors would to. They need to get off their lazy ass and pick up after themselves. Why should the farmer have to clean up after them? The farmers didn’t move; they were there first. And it’s not their trash.

I’ve witnessed this in the city as well. On any given day in the East Bluff, you can see for yourself litterbugs who carelessly discard their trash in people’s yards. If I did that when I was younger, I would have received a good lecture and spend some time grounded; of course I'd have to pick up my mess too.

On another environmental topic, I watched a segment on 60 Minutes last Sunday that featured a scientist who claims that the Bush White House is keeping him silent on his theories regarding global warming. His claims are that if mankind does not act within the next 10 years, that there will be no turning back. This scientist also claimed that the artic regions will suffer the most first. This was also corroborated in a story today at MSNBC. I’ll save the politics of global warming for another debate and another post. The fact remains, the subject of global warming is more common. From everything I’ve seen and read, a vast majority of scientists strongly believe that global warming is possible and is probably happening right now. The difference of opinion is the magnitude of how the problem is growing.

Common Sense of it All: Human mankind is obviously the most intelligent creature on Earth. Arguably, human mankind is also the dumbest creature on Earth. We’re shitting in our own nest here and I don’t think any other animal does that. Our culture has grown to where we are aware of these problems and have developed the technology to begin to combat it. Yet the wheels turn slow. I’m not suggesting we should all join Earth First and become treehuggers, but we, as a global community, need to wake up, get out of denial, change our attitudes and work to make a change for the better. The sooner we start, the better. I don’t want to have to pick out pieces of plastic Wal Mart bags in my sweet corn this summer.