On the Environment, We Need More Gumption, Less Procrastination

The current tsunami of environmental destruction by industry around the globe, Indonesia’s destruction of ancient forests for palm oil, mountaintop removal for coal in the USA, the Niger delta ruined by petrochemical waste in Nigeria, the 20,000+ petroglyhp/rock art on the Burrup peninsula in Western Australia being eroded by industrialization plants on its doorstep and the pollution of Western Australia’s north-west wilderness by gas production, the list goes on, as if the politicians and the business “leaders” have no concept of the scientific reality of ecosystems. The way plant and animal interact to nurture and sustain and perpetuate life.
These “leaders”, political and business, cannot plead ignorance, only that they wilfully ignore the facts and use whatever means possible to muddy the waters, literally and toxically. What is the use of government’s enacting environmental protection laws and then allowing business to go its own way riding roughshod over these very same laws?
Personally I voted for people who would begin, at last, to address these vicious issues with enough integrity to actually make an environmental difference, and yet once in office the only changes that seemed to be happening were that environmental conditions were getting worse as new and previously pristine frontiers were opened up for increasing decimation. What happened? Did the negative effects of youthful drug experimentation finally “kick in”, and all the values espoused on the campaign trail become so much hot air, smoke and mirrors, or did the “business leaders” threaten to withdraw jobs from the economy holding the different governments to ransom, and the environment to destruction?
Surely it is time for these so called “business leaders” to stop looking only at the almighty profit but also the almighty effects their plans will have on the “whole environmental area” to which they plan to utilize. This can only be possible if politicians take up the reins of office as guardians of this generation and of future generations by enacting and acting upon environmental degradation with the utmost regulation and control. It is no longer enough to rely upon “industry self-regulation” when industry has flagrantly ignored its responsibilities. We as communities around the globe can no longer afford some distant businessman poisoning our water and land resources, the world as an ecosystem is losing its capacity to maintain a balance, as our elected members it’s now long overdue for our politicians to show more gumption and less procrastination over the environment, it’s all our world and we’re standing in it.