By Elizabeth Farina
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Next Thursday will mark the 40th anniversary of Earth Day celebrations, and the event is suffering from a mid-life identity crisis. Celebrating environmental quality and conservation is really not the ilk that pollutes the day. We all support and have concern for our planet that has served humanity for eons – it’s not like we can really move out of the global neighborhood.

Let’s face it. Nobody wants to live next to an industrial site that has contaminated drinking water. We all enjoy healthy trees that provide shade. We all like to think we’re deeply inhaling fresh clean air. We’re becoming smarter about supporting smart packaging in our stores and we’ve grown to appreciate independent local farmers through markets, grocery stores that carry their products, co-ops and online ordering. We’ve also have been increasing the steady supply of tote bags for shopping (in our household we use four totes to keep the grocery bill in budget). It’s okay to like nature – yes, in our daily lives, we’re getting really peachy with Mother Nature.

However, there are major problematic issues when it comes to the politics of Earth Day. It appears that we’ve been fed some garbage with data on Global Warming/Climate Change/Darth Vader’s Death Star. If the truth has been massaged to fit an agenda, then there needs to be an open, rhetoric-free discussion and investigation about what we truly need to do to protect our habitat rather than throwing money at a so-called solution that gets everyone quickly nowhere.

There have been several developments over the last few decades that have left a question mark on whether we’re heading in the appropriate direction in protecting our environment.  One “energy-saver” example that has been introduced as an environmentally-friendly alternative to the incandescent bulb has been these curly-shaped blinding bulbs that leave the dining room table looking like a police interrogation room on a b-list film set. The blinding low-watts are just as nice as the other “energy-saver” bulbs that are on par with candlelight. Hopefully, the brain trusts at private companies are studiously working under better lights in developing a vision-friendly bulb too.

Another issue is ethanol-blend fuel. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, “it is produced from starch- and sugar-based feedstocks.” It’s not a new concept, but one that has picked up in popularity due to regulation since the invention of the automobile assembly line.  The folks note that Henry T. Ford supported putting ethyl alcohol in the engine rather than the workers drinking grain alcohol. Yet, corn and wheat are not just fuels for our cars. These are plants that are fuels for humanity. Tapping into any food supply is a bad idea. It’s good to know that there are several industries that are seeking out using different plants such as algae as a source of renewable energy – hopefully, financial support will shift in that direction so food can return to its primary role on the planet.

Also, growing capital is grand. It’s great to see businesses thrive in the market and even better when private industry can generate jobs and profits (I bet you thought you wouldn’t see that sentence in 2010). Good practices have developed over the last few decades with better energy efficient building plans and HVAC maintenance. Major kudos go to both The Fresh Market and Kroger at IvyMont Square for taking vacated buildings and revitalizing its purpose in the community. There are several other local businesses that have jumped into reusing and reinvesting in existing structures. Yet, development has an underlying issue especially when it comes to wetlands that are impacted through development.

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality regulates the impact of wetlands through compensatory mitigation, which is about as confusing as regulatory guidelines can possibly be. Under the Virginia Water Protection Program a ratio of two acres is compensated for one acre of impact in a banking system. The heart of the issue is where are the two acres located for the one local acre being impacted? The system seems flawed if the two acres are located a couple of hundred miles away. Where is the benefit for the locality losing a piece of its natural filtration system?

However, an even bigger issue is recycling. There should be some way for the East Coast to develop a recycling center to handle all the pudding and yogurt cups, milk cartons, and a slew of other items that are placed in a recycling bin must now be discarded because there isn’t an economically feasible way to recycle certain food containers. (See a list of “acceptable and unacceptable items” at http://www.cvwma.com). It’s a bit deflating to get into a habit of recycling items only to find out that they’re not on the accepted list.

So, Earth Day will arrive with thoughts of voluntarily recycling, reusing, and reducing our monstrous footprint that can be seen from the International Space Station. We’ll think green – financially and environmentally – on many ways to preserve or restore the natural beauty of our little corner of the planet. We’ll celebrate with planting trees, picking up litter on the river banks and roadsides, and learn new earth-friendly tips. And we’ll know we will need to sit down at our brightly-lit kitchen tables and have a heart-to-heart about what we really want to achieve in conservation. 

You’re invited to share your thoughts and suggestions. E-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or mail to PO Box 420, Midlothian, Va. 23113.