Sustainability of our Environmental Policy is complex to say the least, but clearly there is a reality that many in the movement either are ignorant of or chose to ignore. The simple truth is that there is a limited amount of capital that can be expended on the environment. This limited amount of capital increases for a given nation as that nation’s GDP increases. For example over the past 10 years China’s GDP has grown, and they have drastically increased their expenditures on the environment.  Corporations struggle with the same reality. The decrease in income over the past 18 months has caused companies to slash their budgets for environmental projects.

The question that must be asked in development of a Sustainable Environmental Policy is “What is the best and highest use for this limited capital?” Is the best use of this limited capital, to decrease the emissions of CO2 by increasing the cost of energy derived from fossil fuels? Is the best use of this capital supplying clean drinking water to the 1/3 of the world population that does not have this basic necessity? 
This blog will attempt to ask these hard questions, and present the data that will hopefully result in a more responsible formulation of an Environmental Policy.

It does not need to be said that the media does not research sufficiently what they present as fact. When it comes to the condition of our environment, they are overly accepting of propaganda published for many reasons other than the dissemination of truthful information. The result of this negligent reporting manifests itself in people’s opinion of the condition of the environment. This was documented by Dunlap and Gallop in an international poll taken in 24 countries. The poll indicated that in virtually every country those polled believed the world’s environment was worse than their own country's, and that their country's environment was worse than their local communities. In other words, when those polled based their opinion of the condition of the environment on their personal experience they believed the environment was in reasonably good shape. However, when they based their opinion on the fear driven tactics of the media, politicians or special interest groups, the environment was perceived to be in poor shape.

The point of this 20 Blog series will be to present the facts about the change in the quality of the environment over the past 20 years, and to encourage those of us that have spent our lives and careers improving the environment through a systematic process of analyzing, designing, and implementing solutions to specific problems. The impetus for this series of blogs was my “all knowing” 16-year old's baseless accusation that after 25 years of cleaning up the environment I was not a conservationist. Frankly, I found this insulting. Over the last 20 years RECON (the company I run) has cleaned up over 3,000 hazardous waste sites, and contained tens of millions of tons of uncontrolled waste, but because some activist group has manipulated public opinion and created a fear of a catastrophic end to the environment as we know it, my 16 year old believes I am not “doing my fair share”. Please subscribe to my blog as I let the numbers speak for themselves. We will analyze the metrics and the trends in the metrics that define the quality of our environment. Stay Tuned!!