Environmental issues are at the top of everyone’s mind these days, but lawmakers (as usual) are acting very slowly or not at all on environmental issues. Most of the laws concerning environmentalism that are being drawn up now or have already been passed into law do not go into full effect for a couple of decades-and in some cases, longer. Evidence from many icy regions worldwide, including the Greenland ice sheet, suggests that the problem of global warming will have had a dramatic and possibly irreversible effect on the Earth’s ice by 2012. And that is just the beginning. New car standards go into effect by 2040, but at current consumption, we will most likely be out of the world’s known oil reserves by then. Lawmakers are not being realistic with their methods or their expectations.
Creating new technologies within eco-friendly parameters takes a long time, but most of the technologies that we need right now are already created. The only problem with most of these technologies is that they are far too expensive for widespread use or the technology is not made available to all people in all places. We do not need to create new technologies to make a difference in the Earth now (though we will still need the new technologies in the long run), we just need to make use of the technologies we already have. Here is how even the smallest governments can help to fight global warming now.
Less people are drinking soda and more are drinking water. This may sound good on the surface, but that water is usually bottled water, whereas most soda is still sold in cans. All plastic bottles can be recycled, but over 80% of the over 28 billion bottles purchased in the US alone last year ended up in landfills. Of the handful of states that offer a deposit-based recycling program, only a couple of those offer returns on plastic bottles. Some water brands are completely exempt from state bottle bills. All of the states-or better yet, Congress, need to enact deposit-based recycling laws across the country. This will dramatically reduce waste, and, at the same time, clean up the roads.
Certain things, like buying Energy Star approved appliances will get the buyer a tax credit, so why not have a tax credit on things like electric lawn mowers and even hybrid cars? These tax credits do not have to be large, just enough to pay one payment on the car-or even half of a payment on the car-and the lawn mower can have the same kind of tax credit as an Energy star appliance. Every little bit would help the consumer and make that consumer able to buy these higher-priced, yet ecologically friendly, alternatives.
States can also make hydrogen fuel and electric recharging stations more common around the country. We already have the hydrogen cars, but they are very expensive and to re-fuel them, most people would have to have their own filling station, making the hydrogen powered car very rare indeed. The people who can afford these cars cannot fill them up easily, so they are forced to use oil with hybrids or pure electric, which tends to have a limited range. Electric cars would also be more common even now if there were more places where you could charge them. The only place that I know of where electric charging stations are remotely common is in California, which seems to be the only place that people take the initiative to help the environment.
There is much more that can be done now or soon, but there seems to be few politicians that are willing to do what needs to be done for the world that they live in. People won’t, and in most respects, can’t do it for themselves.
