istherelifeafter50

They say it’s too late to teach an old dog new tricks but I wonder, does that apply to humans too. Occasionally the fate of the modern world as we know it lies heavily upon my shoulders. I mean should I care about the condition that we leave the world for the upcoming younger generation? Most of them don’t respect or appreciate us baby boomers so fuck ‘em; what do I care about greenhouse gasses. I’ll be dead and they’ll have to deal with it right! Then I remember that my kids and grandkids will probably have to where masks to breath and deal with all the futuristic crap we leave behind just as our parents generation had to handle the smog the industrial revolution left them. It has become almost impossible to turn on the television, or pick up a periodical, without reading or hearing about our frail eco-system, and what we should do as a nation to turn it around before we all melt into a little puddle as the ozone layer disappears and the sun finally just fries us.

As much as dislike being told what to do, especially by someone who appears as pompous as Al Gore, I must admit he has bought to the forefront a lot of the problems we face with global emissions. I hate to see the North Pole disappearing, the smog produced by none caring Eastern European and Chinese companies that still use lead and dyes that America attempted to ban years ago, and thousands of pounds of waste being left literally on our doorstep in Arizona by illegal aliens poring over our borders. It almost seems like the poor depressed people of the world not only don’t care about the problems of disposing of their trash and poisonous gasses and debris but they want to burden us in America with finding away to dispose of it all.

As a nation America is leading the push for the rest of the world to be more diligent in their efforts to combat the gaseous emission problems. Ingenious ideas spring forth  to stop global emissions. I just read an article in a recent Time magazine that dealt with how the shipping industry is turning back the hands of time and using air power to propel ships. (Jim Crace writes of the end times in his novel The Pesthouse; how Americans are migrating from the West coast to walk across the country to catch sail boats back to Europe). Albeit it is now all computerized, and uses kites instead of sails -not quite as romantic an appeal as the sailing ships of yore-, but apparently they have been effective in reducing fuel usage by up to 25%.

What can I do individually to make a difference daily is the challenge I face? The problem as I see it is so huge that for the longest time that I could not fathom anything that I could do that would really make a difference. I car pool  but that is more because the cost of gas being so astronomically high that it makes sense to save a buck on gas, not to save gas so there was less pollution being produced. I could drive slower. No wait, that’s not going to happen, let’s find something more realistic; recycle. Should be easy enough but it takes a lot of work. First off I would have to divide up all the plastic, newspaper, glass and aluminum, For goodness sake who has the time for that; just chuck it all in the same plastic bag and put it out for the garbage men to pick up. It is not like a recycle guy is going to come by and haul the individual bags away.
I remember seeing the recycle center in the parking lot of the YMCA. You mean I have to divide it up, haul it away in my car, and spend time putting the right product in the right dumpster and drive out of my way to get there in the first place? I don’t think so. Just put it in the garbage. Now if the city would just drill large holes in the sidewalk outside each house, label them Plastic, Paper, Aluminum, Glass, so all I have to do is walk outside and dump it in the correct container well then perhaps I would do that. Of course they would have to redesign all the garbage trucks to have big vacuum hoses to drive by and suck each one out independently. City Hall would have to go to a lot of time and expense to do this just to make me happy so it is probably not going to happen.

Since moving to Oro Valley from Tucson I am now privileged to have a truck come by every week and pick up recyclable garbage, and the company even provides containers to pull out to the curb so after a few weeks of moving my wife finally convinced me, kicking and screaming all the way, to start using the service, and for the most part we now do, though I think we are just providing income for the old lady down the block as she appears to lift everyone’s aluminum cans before they are disposed of. And notice I said everyone’s. That’s right, as a community our townhome owners all appear to actively participate in the weekly ritual of recycling.

So is it making a difference? One of the things that I have learned in my employment is that as I attempt to put together my monthly quota to help the office maintain their monthly goal every part of my daily accomplishment pushes my total closer to the goal. As I often hear repeated, every drop fills the bucket. I like to think that the little I accomplish with my daily dividing of recyclable trash does the same. I am helping the country reach its goal in my own minuscule way. If we can all do that then we too will be helping fill that invisible bucket. I do not know if it really makes a difference on a global scale, but I have to assume that the principle works, just on a large scale. I doubt that it will really make a difference in the quality of air earth’s inhabitants will breath in fifty years so I still pity my grandkids but hey they can’t say Poppa didn’t try.

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