Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

Constructive Alternatives

The left has got a legitimate complaint. There really are pressing social problems that need to be solved in our country and our world today. There really does seem to be a serious problem with our national economy, as well as the world economy. Despite the fact that America has finally elected its first black President, racism still runs rampant throughout our society. There's a growing perception among some that we are destroying fragile ecosystems and ruinously altering the very fabric our world is made of with alarming consequences.

And “the right” is out there obstructing every effort to address these problems. According to some all conservatives and Republicans do is obstruct progress and never offer any solutions of their own. Conservatives whine and criticize without engaging in constructive dialog. Considering that, I've decided to try and offer some positive, constructive ideas for how to deal with the problems that face us today. Lets start with just one of them.

Litter and The Environment

Let's face it. To say that people are pigs is actually an insult to pigs. Reports of the mounds of garbage left by celebrants after the Presidential inauguration on Tuesday don't surprise me at all. Nor am I surprised that this litter pile was left by a crowd that most likely was dominated by members of the party of the environment, Democrats. To be fair, the same sort of mess would probably have been left behind by a crowd consisting mostly of Republicans too. I recall well the mess left behind by celebrants at several Christian religious festivals I attended that were held in the Orlando area during the late 1970s. And we know how the left feels about the “religious right.”

Cigarette smokers are another group whose behavior with regard to littering is deplorable. In Seattle, arguably one of the “bluest” of “blue” cities (the Seattle area dominates the politics of the state of Washington, effectively countering the “red state” nature of that part of the state east of the Cascade mountain range) it is not possible to walk down a major street without seeing cigarette butts on the sidewalks, or in the gutters. Areas around designated smoking areas are literally covered with them.

Often, while driving home at night on the freeways I see people in the cars ahead of me throw lit cigarettes out their windows, despite the fact that the state imposes a $1,000.00 fine for throwing burning material out of a car on the highways. In many western states, this particular behavior has been responsible for starting wildfires that destroy homes and seriously damage thousands of acres of “fragile” ecosystems annually.

Can you think of what group or groups of people are most publicly active regarding the expansion of wilderness areas? You would think that these people would be most concerned with keeping our recreation and wilderness areas clean, as they're presumably the ones that will be using them. Why is it then, that just about every time I go for a hike in the woods, I leave carrying more trash than I carried in with me?

So, as I said, I want to offer some positive, constructive ideas to solve this problem. Obviously laws and regulations intended to deal with such deplorable behavior don't work. Perhaps public humiliation will serve to address this problem. I'm seriously considering carrying a video camera with me wherever I go. I've got a relatively nice one that can hold seven hours of video. I've got a tripod so that I can set it up in my car as I'm driving. The idea here is to have it continually recording the actions of the people around me as I'm out walking and driving. When it catches someone in the act of littering (a fairly common occurrence) or tossing a lit cigarette out their window at night, publishing the video to YouTube and sending a copy to the local police, complete with license plates, might serve to get the message across.

What? That's an invasion of privacy? It's not right to expose the hypocrisy of so-called environmentalists? Then YOU come up with an alternative idea.

I'm sure you've seen those signs on the roadsides, “Adopt a Highway.” This is a pretty good program. People and organizations volunteer to clean up a stretch of highway on a regular basis. The problem with this, is that it leaves the responsibility for cleaning up the environment to someone that's not responsible for creating the mess in the first place. It actually encourages littering, because “someone else will pick it up.” Another problem with this is that the volunteers expose themselves to danger while picking up other peoples trash right next to speeding traffic, and volunteers never have enough time to clean up after other people on a daily basis.

The best solution to the problem of litter, and other forms of pollution is for the offender to clean up after himself. If people would stop just dropping their trash wherever they feel like, we'd have a lot less trash to pick up. If smokers would take to carrying plastic bags with them to hold their butts after they've put them out (just as dog owners are required to do to clean up after their dogs when they answer the call of nature) there would be a lot less non-bio-degradable garbage lining our gutters and sidewalks. If they used the ashtrays in their cars instead of disposing of their ashes and butts by letting them blow away in the wind of their car's passage down the road, there's be fewer wildfires. If Starbucks swilling environmentalist hikers carried their empty latte cups out of the forest instead of dropping them on the trails I wouldn't have to pick them up for them when I go for a hike.

So, this is my first real recommendation to solve one of the problems we face today. Pick up after yourself, and if you see someone else littering, pick up after them as well. You might want to also talk to them about it, if you can do so safely. Some people are just plain obnoxious though, especially hypocrites that like to think of themselves as saving the planet while spreading their own pollution. If you see trash on the sidewalk, pick it up. It doesn't matter whose mess it is, pick it up. If we really want a cleaner world, the first thing to do is to take positive action to clean it up.

A few months ago, I saw a commercial on television that emphasized this concept. A man was walking down the street when he observed another man throw away a coffee cup. He stopped to pick it up. Several more similar incidents happened over time. At the end of the commercial, the man that was picking up after our littering friend approached him and presented him with a sculpture — made out of the discarded litter. Now that seems to me to be an effective way to clean up our streets and to get the point across to the offender.

It's a start anyway.