I just wanted to mention the existence of the Hoosier Environmental Council and its website
Vision
We aim to set a new path for Indiana, where the people of our state embrace practices and policies that dramatically reduce the footprint of industry, commerce and agriculture on the environment. Following this path, Indiana will ascend to new heights in our public health, economic well-being, and in our preservation of nature for generations to come.Mission
We aim to address Indiana’s environmental challenges through education and advocacy. We are guided by science, inspired by the ties between nature and humanity, and led to success through partnerships.About Us
The Hoosier Environmental Council, founded in 1983, is Indiana`s largest state-wide environmental organization. HEC has been a leader in bringing visibility to such serious environmental challenges as mercury pollution and power plant waste. Over its twenty-five years, HEC has also succeeded in translating its educational efforts into environmental gains, with forest, groundwater and lake protection as part of its legacy.
I’m glad there are folks out there fighting the good fight. Industry brings immediate, obvious gain — even more so when industry is able to externalize some of its costs, such as pollution. The value of environmental preservation is more subtle. Industry, profitable as it can be, will always have its champions. Fighting for the environment is not as immediately lucrative, so it takes a little more to get people to advocate on behalf of the benefits we all enjoy by not having our environment destroyed. When both sides are evenly matched, perhaps we can develop policies that strike a good balance.
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Up here there’s talk of creating the Marquette Greenway; which will be a continuous strip ( I think at least 100 yards wide) along Lake Michigan from the Illinois state line to the Michigan state line. There will be a bike/walking path along this route. US Steel and many of the big industries are okay with this plan.
That’s cause, like the birds that fly over Lake Semipalatinsk (a man-made, radioactive lake in Kazakhstan created by dozens of atmospheric nuclear tests), people will just spontaneously die as they travel along it, and U.S. Steel workers in lead-lined beekeeper suits can come by with dust mops and shove the bodies off into the weeds.
(Sure, the workers will eventually succumb, too–if not to the site pollution, then to lead poisoning–but their heirs and assigns will appreciate the appreciating stock value of the newly “green” U.S. Steel company.)
I am very grateful for the work HEC does, I just wish their fundraising methods weren’t such a turnoff. I worked for ’em for three days before I got fed up with being trained in tactics little better than bullying, and I was actually told a couple of times to flat-out lie if it’d bring in more money.
They still have a cause worth contributing to, but… that is *annoying* at best. Call me a foolish young’un, but I wish the ‘good guys’ would, y’know, act like it.