Talk about something that gets lip service and very little action (resembling one's first years of high school). Almost every leader in the world has mentioned "the environment" like a religious pursuit during his or her campaign, but none have become attuned to the necessity of giving a damn after the votes are in. Typical reforms include limits on pollution and greater fines, but no one has addressed the basic problem: our technology is opposed to our environment without a massive cleanup effort being made to ensure that industrial byproducts are destroyed or contained.

The computer which you are using to read this text was manufactured in a process that produced industrial chemicals with no clear use and often, no clear disposal pathway. If you're like the average user, within five years the unit you're currently using will be nearing the landfill and you'll have a new shiny one - which will in turn go into the landfill. Thus is illustrated the dual paradox of industry: that is processes themselves are toxic, and that to make money, obsolescence must be designed into every object.

Any leader serious about recycling will have to address the motivations of human society and the types of products it finds useful, and/or find a method for converting old products into safe recycled materials. And we should rethink our selfish attitudes toward "convenience" and freedom through material objects and massively polluting vehicles. Will this happen? Probably not.

The benefit of having it happen is that we will have greater flexibility in choosing our own environment in the coming years. Otherwise, we can count on our outside world becoming toxic, and thus being forced to take over the last parts of it that we don't yet control.

-=~=-

There are several ways of seeing a solution for this problem. One is to take an extremist angle, like Finnish ecofascist Pentti Linkola, in which it is believed that the need to fix the problem will become imminent so rapidly that anything other than whole response cannot be considered. Others, like Jacques Cousteau, argue convincingly for something less intense. Still some tell us that nothing needs to be done and that no problem exists; the answer is probably in the middle and means that we have to act immediately on certain things but not others.