I write as someone who comes to Carlsborg regularly to bicycle the Olympic Discovery Trail, dine and visit friends.
Some would claim opposing Olympic Systems Properties’ Carlsborg transfer station is the height of NIMBYism.
We all benefit from sewage treatment plants, power plants, freeways, etc.
And as our population grows, so must the infrastructure to serve it.
If the civic engineers calculate that situating a dump next to your house, business or dog park most efficiently serves the greatest good for the greatest number, good citizenship requires you to take one for the team.
Yet, as nature is teaching us, our population cannot keep growing, consuming, and producing waste faster than She can detoxify it without destroying our habitat, and the habitat of all species.
We tell ourselves, “OK, someday we’ll have to shift the paradigm, but I’ve got to ensure the financial security of my children now. If selling widgets built to break after five years and end up in a landfill, or promoting gas-guzzelers that help oil companies pay bigger dividends, does that, then never mind posterity.”
Where to put a new transfer station is not the issue, our need for one is.
Until we stop generating garbage at three times the global average and carbon dioxide at five times the global average we are just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
NIMG, Not In My Generation, has replaced NIMBY as the new cognitive dissonance.
Simply put: In a closed environment, such as Earth’s biosphere, sustainable growth … isn’t.
Omar Firestone
Port Angeles