PEORIA -- Amidst all the blather about Earth Day, most of which I agree with, consider the forbidden topics that you won't see in mainstream media:
1. Overpopulation. Only Diane Rehm on NPR has the courage to discuss this topic, the most important environmental issue of all. Today, April 22, she interviews:
William Butz, president and CEO, Population Reference Bureau.
Paul Ehrlich, president, Center for Conservation Biology, Bing Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University and author of "The Dominant Animal" and "The Population Bomb."
Hania Zlotnik, director, Population Division, United Nations.
Ehrlich says the US is the most overpopulated nation in the world because its citizens use so many of the planet's resources!
Read or listen here.
2. Eating meat. The statistics and facts are overwhelming that meat eating is more harmful to the environment than autos! Read it and weep.
3. A 'bottle/can bill.' A few years ago our current governor Pat Quinn tried to enact a law requiring deposits on bottles and cans, to increase the likelihood they will be recycled. It failed to come up for a vote in the Illinois General Assembly, despite Quinn, then Lt. Gov., who pushed it hard.
Why? Quinn told me that lobbyists came down hard against it, and it was killed. Grocery stories don't want to bother with this, he said, even though they would be paid generously to handle the items.
So Illinois is littered with trash along its streets and roadsides, trash that in the surrounding states in the Midwest are worth cash! Amazing.
The Journal Star in its print edition today does have one important fact, while it relies on the voluntary and ineffective 'please recycle' mantra: every recycled aluminum can is able to power a TV set for three hours! That's coal not mined to destroy the environment or burned to pollute the atmosphere.
Is our planet doomed, by the ignorance and stupidity of its inhabitants?
That's the real question for Earth Day!
-- Elaine Hopkins
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