Goodbye Environment, Goodbye Health

I've been reeling from the outcome of the election.  In my head I've put so many posts together.  Abbreviated versions went on Facebook.  It's been hard to completely collect my thoughts.

One thing Trump promised was to bring jobs back, and a lot of people voted for him just based on that one promise.  There was an interview with a woman who was excited because she couldn't wait for the factory in her town to open again for her husband to go back to work.

Oh how the naive have been played.  They will find that out soon enough.

One area that's about to be decimated is in regard to the environment.  Trump promised to lift regulations in place.  These regulations have given us cleaner air and water over the last four decades.  I grew up just outside of New York City and I remember the pollution haze that often settled over the city.  Even when I moved out in 2005, there was still such a difference in the sky between New York and the White Mountains where I live now.

This area has seen its share of issues too.  There's a superfund site not far from my house.  If it hadn't been caught when it was, I wouldn't be able to drink the water from the well on my property; water that goes to the other 400-500 homes in this development as well.

That's the thing about environmental regulations and business.  They were put in place for a good reason.  They were put in place because people's very lives were threatened.  If you've seen the movie Erin Brockovich, I can tell you that was happening all across the nation.

Northern New England was built primarily on logging enterprises.  Paper mills and lumber mills were the mainstay of many towns.  A friend of mine, we'll call him "Ben", grew up in one of those towns.  He was diagnosed with asthma when he was young, probably as a result of what the pulp mills were spewing into the air that he was breathing every day.  He remembers the air when he was younger not looking quite as pristine as it does now.

I've traveled all over this state.  One of the images that left a lasting impact was going to a secluded lake in the northern part, with no cities or towns or manufacturing anywhere near it, and seeing the effects of the acid rain from the mid-west.  There was a brown foam along the shores of the lake.

While you might see this new President lift environmental restrictions under the guise of bringing back jobs, it's not going to happen.  The pulp mills and lumber mills that closed north of me aren't going to open again.  And is that really what you want?  Are you willing to kow-tow to these corporations and sacrifice your children's health?  They already had a choice; a choice to stay and be good neighbors in their community, fixing what needed to be fixed so people's health and the environment didn't suffer, or cutting and running to countries where the rules were more lax and they didn't care if they killed people and the environment along the way.  These corporations already made their choice.  They aren't going to come back.  All that's going to happen is future generations being doomed to suffer because of the short-sightedness of this one.

There will be more Ben's in the future of this country.  There will be more polluted sites; more polluted rivers; more corporations not held accountable.  But there won't be more jobs.