Secretly Good

I’ve read recently that some cities are taking the drastic of step of actually going green. One way they’re doing that is changing out the street lamp bulb with a led light bulb. I think that’s pretty fabulous and would love to see that trend come to my hometown.

LED lights are more expensive, but they last a lot longer and use less electricity. Imagine if every town in America switched how much energy would be saved. Of course, in my corner of Ohio there would no doubt be an uproar. They’d complain about the cost of purchasing the lights without actually adding the cost of the electricity powering the old bulbs. And there’d be tons of debate in the local newspaper’s comment section. But, considering the economic situation in our town right now, I think that would be a great opportunity to both save money and help the environment (as long as the powers that be don’t actually mention the environment).

You know, I live in a beautiful corner of Ohio. Take a road trip around here any time of the year and the landscape will take your breath away. It’s beautiful here. And you’d think most of the people that live here would want to keep it that way. You’d think we’d be more nature conscious/green in an effort to maintain our landscape and way of life. Not so.

People here are very outspoken when it comes to their global warming denial and saving the Earth from our pollution. They don’t believe in global warming and the Earth is here only for a short amount of time– until Jesus returns — so why waste time trying to keep it healthy? There are a few “tree hugger” groups scattered here and there, but they’re incredibly unpopular and if it means paying money or losing a Wal-Mart, these kind folks (the tree huggers) won’t get anywhere. It’s very sad, actually.

A couple of years ago I watched with a deep sadness as my town literally blew the top off a local mountain (technically a “foothill”, but it was our mountain). There had been a mudslide and instead of following West Virginia’s example of barricades and fencing, the town decided to get rid of the hill from whence the land slid. A local businessman and lobbyist (of our city council), of course, was able to buy the land from the original owner and secure all mineral rights to the mountain (hill). He made a killing and the beauty that was that natural landmark went up in smoke. As did the habitat of all the animals that lived there.

And why? So the businessman could get the money for the minerals and the town wouldn’t have to pay to put up a barrier against the landslides. Of course, they didn’t predict that taking away all that topsoil and leaving a gaping wound on the earth would cause more land to slide, but it did. What was left of that mountain started to come down onto the highway this past fall. More so than came down in all the years since that road has been built. The people of the town didn’t look that far into the future. They didn’t want to pay a little money now to save money (and their landscape) in the future. It’s unbearably depressing to live here sometimes.

So, I’m hoping that someone in my town can convince the council that led lights are the way to go for street lamps. If we can keep the tightwad old codgers from figuring out there’s some good behind the low-energy lamps we might actually succeed in getting them.

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