When Nick LaFave interviewed me he asked me if I was a single issue candidate. I had to laugh. Just look at the list of subject matter to the right.
When he asked me for an example of things I’d like to do in the legislature other than to win compensation for Duluth from the Red Plan the first, but hardly the most important, thing that jumped into my mind was passing a law which forbade Minnesota School Districts from buying politically correct text books for our schools. Actually, I said I wanted to forbid the purchase of text books sold to the State of Texas.
The other issue that I first locked onto a week ago when I was confronted with the possiblility of an open Senate seat was altering the waste stream to keep our trash from getting into the enviornnemt. I’m particularly worried about throw away electronics and goods with dangerous rare earths or complex pharmaceutical or carbon based compounds. I’d like companies to have waste disposal plans for consumers of their rapidly obsolescent products.
Ironically, when I first ran against Mike Jaros in 1976 I called him up to introduce myself and we went out to the Perkins by the Miller Hill Mall for coffee (How about that you Civility police?) We had a very cordial conversation and have been friends ever since even though I ran against him two years later. We talked about his first legislative roommate after he was elected. I had worked on David Cummiskey’s campaign and he won in part on a platform of making sure we recycle aluminum cans an eminently sensible and frankly cost effective thing to do. He was defeated in a run for reelection by the canning company unions in our town.
Most of us have little idea how our waste spreads around. When I traveled through the sparsely populated Colorado Plateau I was disheartened to see trash and debris sprinkled over the red landscape of Northern Arizona. All that stuff washes into the water shed. Much of it is more refined petroleum products called plastic. It swirls from all the worlds rivers into huge “garbage patches” thousands of miles from land.
Take a look at these pictures to see the result for wildlife.
As for the less refined oil spilling from that mile deep pin point in the Gulf here’s an interesting projection of where its likely to end up.
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