It’s a little bit sad to think that this is my last response paper for MHC 200. I’ve gotten so used to responding to the various things that happen in our class that now it feels as if there is an impending void approaching. But I can still see the tendrils of how each response has built upon the others, and how what we’ve learned is all coming together. Since the beginning of this course, we’ve somewhat avoided the question of what happens to our garbage after it is created, collected, and sent away. And now it’s clear that we’re doing the same thing now as we’ve been doing all the time before—making it someone else’s problem. NYC has been a wonderful benefactor of garbage, and Tullytown has wholeheartedly accepted its gifts (for a price).
But sarcasm aside, I don’t know how comfortable I feel with having some concentrated group of people deal with a much larger group’s problem. However, in some sense, we do this anyway with our emergency services; police and firefighters are paid to put themselves in danger’s way for the good of society, but it would seem that this situation can easily be distinguished from those of emergency workers. Tullytown residents don’t deal with this garbage for only 8 hours a day; it’s a perpetual situation for them. They are constantly put in the way of the various dangers that this landfill poses. And even moreso, while it may be the residents’ choices to stay there to receive monetary benefits in exchange for their living situation, the children of these residents have no such choice; they are still put in danger’s way.
The more important issue is the one we addressed after discussing Tullytown: How can we reduce garbage ourselves? The most important idea to consider at this point is sustainability, and we’ve already delved into the specificities of achieving it. The term “cradle-to-cradle” has been reiterated because now we’re starting to apply this idea to the problems that are currently plaguing humans—in this particular case, garbage. We are making our own fair share of waste that we should be reusing or at least mandatorily sorting through in order to recycle. We have to institute policies that force companies rethink sustainability. It’s now just reducing resource input and waste output by increasing the efficiency of current machinery and technology. This seems no different than the end-of-pipe and/or pollution prevention schemas. “Reducing the human footprint” completely sidesteps the possibility of taking away that footprint. As the entirety of this course has shown, this approach spells out disaster for our future—to the extent that it doesn’t attempt to solve the real problem. There is little recognition of the central flaw in the system as a whole. We must figure out efficient, sustainable ways to deal with our “waste.”
In general, this generation of Americans should to start to feel the necessity of environmental protection. We’ve discussed the issues and figured out ways to potentially deal with them, but I’m hoping that we enter another phase of environmental necessity very soon—one in which the people recognize that society has done wrong and in which the majority of people subscribe themselves to reversing the impact of humanity. We need to have a messianic moment. It’ll be more than just a leap of faith; it’ll be an action calculated by reason and a desire to keep living in a world better than the one we have developed. I’m convinced. I just wish other people would start to see it the same way.
