Everyone would agree that people are entirely dependent upon the environment for survival. Everyone needs clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and healthy food to eat. To not take care of these resources is foolish. It’s easy to become detached from these things when you can just get your food and water at a grocery store, and you don’t actually see where they are coming from. If you did live on the land where you could see where all of your food and water came from, I would suspect you would take better care of that land than you do now. Nowadays our food comes from all over the world. More than likely you don’t even know where all the food in your refrigerator is coming from.

As one of the people who are concerned about the environment, I don’t want the government to come in and control how everyone lives their lives. I think it should be a personal choice. The difference, of course, is that many times the government and taxpayers end up paying for the costs of corporate farmers polluting the water we drink, or the people or companies tossing their garbage into waterways, etc. The Ames Water Treatment Plant requires $30 million dollars in order to keep up to needed capacity when I’m sure most regular taxpayers aren’t the main contributors to the pollution.

Personally, I don’t care if you chose to drive around a Hummer or turn your thermostat down to 55 degrees in the summertime, as long as you are the one who ends up paying for the smog you create and the cleanup it entails. If you decide to live an excessive lifestyle, you should have to pay the environmental costs, not the government and certainly not me.

Concern for the environment is not just a Democratic issue — it’s an issue that affects everyone because a clean environment is essential to life. I don’t want the next generation to grow up without clean air, clean water and disease-free food, so I try to examine my own impact on those things and try to pay attention to what’s going on around me. Maybe that makes me a wacko.

Sonia Breitzke

Senior

Political Science