By DARLENE VANNEDGEWATER, Fla. -- I heard on the news about our president rolling back the climate saving methods put into place by Obama.
That got me thinking back to my childhood.
If you are as old as I am (70) you’ll remember when people routinely threw gum wrappers, empty cigarette wrappers, paper cups, and whatever else they didn’t want to mess up their car with without a second thought. This went on for years. Eventually our roadsides were filled with litter and finally a campaign was begun to enlighten people and get them to stop littering.
Remember the Indian with one tear running down his face? I don’t think many who saw that announcement have ever forgotten him or that message. It took years, but most people now have litter bags in their cars. Not so many are as thoughtless about throwing garbage out their car windows, although I can attest some still do. I live on a main road and regularly find beer cans, crumpled papers and fast food rubble on my lawn. Still, we did a good job and cleaned up our roads substantially.
YouTube download / All Classic video / Crying Indian (1971) - Classic PSA: Classic Public Service Announcement featuring a crying indian from 1971. Part of the Keep America Beautiful campaign.Remember the Indian with one tear running down his face? I don’t think many who saw that announcement have ever forgotten him or that message. It took years, but most people now have litter bags in their cars. Not so many are as thoughtless about throwing garbage out their car windows, although I can attest some still do. I live on a main road and regularly find beer cans, crumpled papers and fast food rubble on my lawn. Still, we did a good job and cleaned up our roads substantially.
Then we started on Pollution Pete cars that were belching smoke and were old and needed repair. We had mandatory vehicle inspections to get people to fix their cars and also keep us all safer on the roads. That led to a very nearly end of these cars on the road. Again that took a good while but how many Pollution Pete’s do you see these days? I rarely see any and when I do they are so obvious that they stand out.
Now we have the arguments back and forth about whether or not we have global warming, if coal poisons the air, if factory and vehicle emissions are causing our temperatures to rise, and should we be looking for a better more sustainable less polluting way to power our lives. We had a conference with other countries regarding the issue and signed in unison with them a guarantee that we all would support ways to lesson global warming.
The air was very slowly becoming better, more people were going solar trying to get off the grid. It has been said for many years our electric grid needs to be repaired so that if one area goes down the whole country doesn’t go with it but nothing has been done to fix this. The system is old and too tied together and is able to be hacked at any time leaving us all without power. Who is paying attention to that issue? It seems no one at all is even looking at ways to fix that. We will rue the day when the blackout happens.
Now our president has withdrawn our approval of the global contract with other countries, there are no rules any more. He is possibly going to do away with the EPA which is how Michigan got their water problem noticed and fixed. We are going to be defenseless about anything to do with good air, good food, safe energy. It terrifies me. The whole country should be afraid enough to stop him or at least try. How anyone can want to or believe that undoing all we have achieved so far is a forward move is beyond me. Yet he still has, last I heard, 35% approval rating. How is that possible? The country and many parts of the world that have supported us in the past are already ruing the day he was elected.
We are a laughing stock around the world and have lost most of the respect we have earned over the years. Is that alright with you? It sure isn’t with me. Wake up out there! Get involved! Do something so there will be a decent world left to your children and grandchildren.