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Economic Multipliers (167)
Do you know what these are?
They help CREATE wealth in systems.
Common sense is the best economic multiplier any nation can ever have.
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In August of 2015, an old mine site in Colorado released a large volume of metal-laden water. In May of 2016, the legal papers started flying.
Young people must start QUICKLY thinking about the easiest ways to deal with old environmental problems AND start asking ‘Why?’
WHY?
WHY, after 30 plus years of Superfund and other environmental programs (with many of the people who started the programs now retiring), do any old sites still exist in the United States where a release like this could happen?
WHY, in a state with an abundance of sunlight, plenty of wind and lots of very educated people, has no one figured out an inexpensive way to reduce contaminated water volumes and concentrate contaminants so they can be adequately processed (used or disposed of … and in this instance, don’t think plants)?
WHY is it so difficult to apply seemingly practical solutions to problems such as this one?
WHY are more of these problems still being created nationally and globally? (For contaminated water such as this, you must think about the visible (surface) and the invisible (underground).)
If you pay attention to people in ‘politics,’ ‘the media’ and ‘business,’ a greater percentage of the time when problems occur, most run around trying to figure out who to blame and how many lawsuits to file.
If you have major problems, those actions aren’t going solve them. And, along the way, just one emergency response (for only one site) can cost far more than any properly implemented solution (systemwide).
So, people younger than me (I’m considered a ‘boomer’):
How do you take control of a situation if you don’t own the land?
If you have a workable solution and get land access but lack the money and resources to implement it, how can you solve the problem?
How do you ‘insure’ a site, the work and workers if you don’t own the land or the existing problem? This seems unimportant until you consider that ‘solutions’ can create their own sets of problems.
If the solution requires long-term monitoring and maintenance, how do you pay for those?
This is one of the most easily solvable problems that the nation faces. And, it’s not so easy when you start adding in all the things that go along with the ‘solution.’
I can tell you (scientifically) how to solve this problem (the emergency response solution is not economically practical long-term). And yet, I am at a loss to tell you how (politically) to do it. The HOW (do) part is about money and resources and connections and people who can make a commitment to solutions which require a lot of long-term (hopefully inexpensive) maintenance (ponder infinity).
Since ‘solutions’ are the ‘easy part,’ when you vote for the next President of the United States, make sure you ask HOW they are going to do anything. Make sure they’ve thought about WHY whatever they are proposing hasn’t yet been done.
Leadership requires a LOT of commitment.
And it’s easier to be committed when common sense is applied.
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P.S. Do these things display a lack of common sense?
After a major U.S. hurricane, helicopters with reporters and politicians flew into an area hundreds of times to let the world know that bathrooms had backed up and basic things like toilet paper were missing. After the first few reports like that, wouldn’t you think that people coming in from resource-endowed areas would have been carting along portapotties, toilet paper and lots of other basic supplies? They did have transportation. And didn’t ANYONE know any basic plumbing? (See No. 168 for tips)
A U.S. city (not mine) with a one-time surplus of tax revenue needs major road repairs, some new water pipes and a long-range plan for greater VERY BASIC infrastructure maintenance and development. They are considering using some of the tax money to subsidize a sports complex even though it’s possible to raise private money for a project like that, it’s NOT possible to get private funding for most basic road repairs AND home values (along with the associated property tax base) will decline if basic road repairs are not made.
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