I spent most of my adult life trying to lessen the impact of the waste of Minnesota society. Apart from some focused successes, I can mainly look back on mournful monuments of discarded waste in the land, water and air. I see now a wide range of memorials to parts of the earth we altered and destroyed in a frenzy of consumption. I don’t see how this can continue.
All this dumped waste surrounds us as our accusing souvenirs of a land pillaged by us and our recent ancestors. The piles of waste and rubble are reminders of how we took from the earth more than we could truly use in reasonable time and in a respectful manner. We attempted to satisfy our immediate wants and cravings, then quickly moved on. The ephemeral benefit has been bought at the sacrifice of materials that took many life-times to fashion.
We no longer satisfy our needs by simply consuming the plants and animals that come from the earth. We now consume the earth itself in an effort to give substance to the objects of our craving. These monuments to our grasping are not things of beauty.