In an August 20, 2012, column in our local Daily News-Record, George Will makes light of what he sees as media hysteria over our being on the verge of depleting earth's resources and endangering the future of our planet. Human ingenuity in discovering, extracting and more efficiently using non-renewable resources, he believes, will indefinitely delay any real ecological crisis, and he belittles the current focus on teaching children to “reduce, reuse and recycle.”
With all due respect, I am disturbed Will's inference that any admonition to conserve originates with modern day tree huggers. Conservation has in fact been a part of the core values we were taught by our parents and grandparents, frugal folks who believed they were to faithfully care for the earth and live by “waste not, want not,” and “a penny saved is a penny earned.”
I won't get into an argument here about how global warming may affect the future of our planet, but let's face it, non-renewable resources are, by definition, irreplaceable, which means we should all adopt a sober sense of stewardship in our use of them. Our rate of consumption in the US can be sustained only by denying billions of people in the rest of the world the same extravagances we take for granted.
Good planets are hard to find, and if everyone lived like us, it would take numerous planets to provide for our wants and to absorb our waste.
P. S. One of my readers provided the following helpful link to a blog about setting up recycling at your workplace.
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