I don’t understand the crowd that thinks the Environmental
Protection Agency ought to be dismantled. I remember a childhood in which
people took whatever they didn’t want and just tossed it into creeks and rivers:
old tires, wrecked cars, dead appliances, box springs, garbage… even chemicals.
Every few months there would be a fish kill on about a quarter of mile of the
stream that flowed through my Pennsylvania town—courtesy of discharge from a
creek-side dry cleaning plant.
As I got older I recall flying into cities that weren’t
visible until the plane pierced the yellow smog that hovered above. You didn’t
need to be an M.D. to figure out that it probably wasn’t healthy to breathe
that air. I also remember taking parts of Pittsburgh home with me—in the form
of grime and soot that clung to my clothing and exposed skin. Or driving
through places like Latrobe and Butler as fast as I could because the stench of
paper mills watered my eyes and constricted my throat. These memories make me
testy when I hear business-at-any-cost advocates talk about emasculating the
EPA. Don’t get me started on idiots like Mitch “Burn as Much Coal as Possible”
McConnell.
Pre-Earth Day American imagery came flooding back last week
when I took a train from western Massachusetts to Philadelphia. Amtrak isn’t
known for its scenic journeys, especially not in the Northeastern megalopolis. You
get a great view of postindustrial America as you whiz (or crawl) through
Holyoke, Springfield, New Haven, Bridgeport, Yonkers, Newark, and Trenton. It
also seems as if trackside is the new dumping ground for the detritus of the
American Dream gone wrong. Flat out ugly would be another way of expressing it.
Those old enough will recall the difference Lady Bird
Johnson’s Highway Beautification Act made to American highways and byways. It
made me wonder what a modern version of it would look like. We pat ourselves on
the back when we recycle cans, glass, and paper, but the data is pretty clear
that these things make just a dent in improving the environment. I’ll take and
support that dent, but there’s so much more that could be done to make America
a more pleasant and ecologically sound land. Why not start with the trackside?
What if we tried to convert squalor to dollars? (I like that
phrase for a campaign!) When I look out the train window at abandoned
factories, ghost parking lots, rusting heaps of metal, and cast off junk, I
envision the following: real estate, recycling, repurposing, and reinvigorating
local economies. First, local governments should seize these blighted and
abandoned places by eminent domain and subdivide them into real estate parcels.
Second, offer free land to any developer but with the stipulations that the
site must be cleared and cleaned before anything else is done, and that all
usable materials must be salvaged and either used on site or sold. Those old
buildings are eyesores, but think of the number of reusable bricks, concrete
blocks, sheets of tin, steel I-beams, cables, and pieces of wood contained
therein. them.
In like fashion, imagine how much rubber could be chopped
and reused from those old tires, how much asphalt could be crushed and made
into new, how much glass could be re-fired, and how much metal could be
re-smelted. Imagine, if you can, taking a train through a corridor of new
developments, parks, or just good old Mother Nature reclaiming land where
bric-a-brac and rubbish once collected. Imagine too the number of jobs that
would result if we hired people to carefully recycle rather than sending in
wrecking balls, bulldozers, or worse: waiting for he ravages of time to undo
the ravages of humankind. Too expensive? Compared to what? What is our
landscape worth? How much is it worth to put the American Dream on display
rather than dying a slow death before our eyes? And while we’re at it, let’s
give the EPA the power to make sure we don’t make these mistakes again.
