To the editor:
“What if the climate change problems like plastic pollution, energy crisis, and environmental doom are symptoms of one malady, and it’s something we actually can fix? Correct, the planet is fighting one arch-villain: Waste.”
Americans live in the most wasteful civilization in history. It’s beyond what we haul to the curb. It’s rooted in what we eat and drink and how we cook.
Waste is the main thing we pay for in our utility bills and at the gas pumps.
Thinking of seemingly unsolvable Earth — destroying crises as byproducts of waste is powerful and hopeful. There’s no partisan divide where one side says “Yay, waste!”
Instead there are people at work in our neighborhoods right now, showing us how to tackle waste and the catastrophe it drives — saving, even making money while doing it.
The best opportunity to improve our quality of life and the plant begins with refraining the entire doom-scroll as waste. What we choose to use is important, but it’s what we squander that’s killing us.
How is it normal that 40% of what our industrial farm and food system produces ends up in the landfill?
It may be time to take a step back and ask yourself;, what you really need to know.
Edward Humes’ new book “Total Garbage” will entertain and inform you that may well save both your life and our planet. Enjoy.” Bill McKibben
Robert M. LaPorte, M.D. Elmwood Township
