Can we turn environmental responsibility over to the
individual? Do we have to rely on laws? Can we trust
people not to dump oil on the ground or burn scrap, or
do anything that infringes on their neighbor's clean
environment. No of course not. We know we must engage
people to take responsibility and we also need laws to
enforce compliance. There will always be scofflaws.
In fact we may all be scofflaws to one degree or
another at one time or another (harmlessly of course).
In the long run, a more powerful tool to dissuade
the scofflaw is community. Scofflaws will resent the
law but answer to community. Ultimately community is a
more powerful deterrent than the law and provides
social fabric that encourages growth.
Unfortunately community is dead. Its demise began
with the industrial age when people moved to the cities
from rural communities. We lost not only community but
the multigenerational fostering where children learned
life's lessons not only from grandparents and family
but with interaction from their village or community.
Now we have media, television and the internet. Mom
might be watching TV in one room, Dad in another and
the kids in still another room. Not only has community
been fragmented but the family as well.
Without this community bond to dissuade
scofflaws we rely on the legal system. Paranoia and
suspicion replace the bonds and trust of society. The
unhealthy alternative provides for a divide in our
society that may lead to further degradation of
environmental values. More regulation and the cycle
leads to the police state we're entering into where
life has less value with no end to the decaying spiral
in sight.
kbushnel.sdf-us.org/contact.html
What I've seen is if a community is already divided it
responds to a tragedy in the worst possible way;
usually blaming the victims. Laurie Garrett, Senior
Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author
of the "I Heard The Sirens Scream"
