I am an avid environmentalist. Conservation, management of the land and wildlife and watershed protection are important to me. So, when fanatics bent on religious zeal begin to dictate how we are going to save the environment, my hackles go up. Especially when their "do good" attitude is going to end up causing a lot of damage.
I really enjoyed the article in today’s Daily News from Bill Goss, "Make children leaders in improving environment". At first, I thought it was just another moonbat’s dissertation on how to turn children into brainwashed automatons mindlessly chanting, "Green is good!" But Mr. Goss has a consulting company Quality Systems Consulting Group (www.merrimackvalleygreen.com, e-mail at merrimackvalleygreen@comcast.net.) His article of course had the main thrust of teaching children how to grow and think into responsible citizens who know how to preserve and protect the environment.
What was striking was his support of the ISO 14001 program which has been adopted by 140 countries. The program is an environmental management system which strives for proper environmental compliance and performance improvement. Notice especially the statement "Peformance Improvement".
The motto is an environmental management plan called "Plan, Do, Check, Act Cycle". Basically, as Mr. Goss explained, you plan on what you are going to do to improve the environment, then you "do" or enact your plan. Then you "check" by monitoring and measuring the plan’s achievements so that they have concrete numbers supporting what they have done. Finally, they must "act" by reviewing the results and learn from any mistakes that have been made in order to begin the cycle again with more planning seeking better results.
We have seen the "plans" and the "doing" in the here and now. We have seen wind turbines put up big and small, solar panels put into the Tannery and the Rupert Nock School and geo-thermal into several homes and countless buildings made into "green" structures.
But something is terribly missing. We need to measure and test the results of these actions and seek resolutions on some new challenges that may arise as a result. Already, we are seeing negatives and disappointing expectations. We should then act on these results by returning to the planning board for modifications.
Instead, we are stuck on "Doing" as if a lot of "Doing" is going to save the environment. Because of a refusal to check the results, I see great harm and costly mistakes in the near future.
-P. Preservationist
Brick and Tree 