My Philosophy

I may come across sometimes as unmindful of the concerns of the little people or uncaring about the environment.  The last one hurts a little because, as a chemist familiar with test procedures and the results for this area, I probably have a better idea on the state of the environment than people who are much more militant about their environmentalism.

Let me say at the outset I do not want to see the local environment, as well as that of the larger area and the country as a whole, polluted.  I have lived here nearly 40 years, raised my sons here, and now my oldest son is raising his sons in the area.  I have the same interests as someone who is just starting out and has children who are much younger than they are.  My environmental beefs are two fold – what constitutes pollution and what efforts will be the most efficient and cost effective.

To a certain extent, just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is pollution.  Cigarette smoke represents pleasure to some folks (I don’t know what is pleasurable about using your nose for a chimney and your lungs for a filter but I won’t go there) and can represent agony and allergic problems for others. Deep coal mining in this area served to heat homes and businesses all over the country, including the house where I was raised in Easton, but represented miserable working conditions, inhumane employers, and black lung, to generations of miners.  Coal mining money from this area helped to get Lafayette College going, indirectly contributing to my education. We had Markle, Pardee, and Van Wickle Halls, all partially built on the backs of generations of men coughing their lungs up in the mines of the Hazleton area.

But I learned a long time ago in college, but not in my classes, that if you are going to be against something, it is far better and increases your credibility if you propose a viable replacement for that which you are against.  For example, if you are going to work toward eliminating coal use, you had better come up with a viable alternative.  And by that I mean one that will not replace one hurt on our citizens, a dirty environment, with a different one, energy costs they can’t absorb. 

We must also remember that industry does not create their waste materials, legitimate or otherwise, in a vacuum.  If you have ever bought a gallon of paint, and who hasn’t, you have contributed to the waste stream of the paint mill, not just purchased a product from it.  Your demand for a gallon of paint, evidenced by your purchase, also created the ‘demand’ for whatever waste products the manufacture of that paint necessitated.   The factory did not create the waste – you did.

That does not mean we can’t insist that the manufacturers of what we use as individuals and as a society, conform to processes that are the easiest on the environment and result in the least amount of waste.  But if we want what modern business can give us, than we also want the waste involved.