A person who wants to remain identified only as Bob from Penn State University, sent me some criticisms on my opposition to the open burning bill. Here is my reply.

people like me are trying to clean up the world while people like you are busy burning their garbage.

Pollution is an interesting thing. Everybody wants less of it, yet defining it and how much is worth getting of is subject to politics. There are many different chemicals released in the air that are not healthy for us humans or animals.

Yet, as humans, we have to choose what is an appropiate level, and try to reach that level by pollution abatement. Ideally, we would like to elimate all sources of pollution, but that would be impossible, and come at a high cost.

On these grounds I have been very criticial of global warming actavists. While global warming is happening, there is little that we can do to stop it, without a serious cost to other environmental programs.

Instead, we should be working on cleaning up real sources of pollution, not CO2. How about all that sulfur dioxide that is chewing up parts of the Adirondacks? Or all those superfund sites that are still waiting to be cleaned up (thanks in part to those Republicans who managed to kill it's main source of revenue)?

Not to mention other very serious problems we need to deal with: open space, poverty, and agriculture. Turning farmland and woods into suburbs is a real *environmental* problem. Poverty is also an obvious problem, poor people don't have the values or the fisical ability to support the environment.

here is a solution for your garbage problems: don't make so much waste to begin with, then you won't have problems disposing of it.

I agree, that is the best solution. Many people say I go way over board on this aspect, I almost never go out and have fast food, as I believe that is so wasteful. Many of my friends think I'm nutty about that. This has probably cost me some girl friends too.

I've also been known to hold on to scrap paper, cans, and the alike, for long periods of time, until I can find a recycle bin.

I'm a real nazi about recycling, you should search my archives about New York City and recycling. I probably am more bitter about their suspension of their program, then anybody else who is more sane minded.

This one of things I hate about many 'environmentalists': they seem to think they are doing this whole 'green' thing, yet they tend to be at least as wasteful as the general population.

it should be illegal to burn garbage.

I'm a fan of keeping government close to the people. Towns (of populations less then 20,000) can already decide on this in New York. Many already have—every town 'close' or part of a suburb has banned open burning.

Do we need yet another big, unfundated mandate from the state or federal government, metling in people's backyards? People should decide for themselves, not big government. Why should New York City people decide for my town?

if burning your garbage didn't affect anyone else but you, then I would care less about if you burned your garbage or not. but face it: burning garbage puts dangerous crap into the air that we all must breathe. once all the air on this planet is full of crap, that's it we can't make any more air.

Yeah, I read way to much about this issue (and the related debate). Some of the chemicals created by burning are pretty toxic. Look at cigeratte smoke. People die left and right from smoking. And plastics have even more nasty chemicals in them, when burned. Very small amounts of them—it's not like plastic or paper is pure toxins. I'm not an idiot.

But I look step outside, and breathe clean air. The city (Albany) is 30 miles away. Pollution really isn't all that significant of a problem around here. Nor is it, when I get farther out.

it seems typical of old-fashioned people to want to burn their garbage, because they aren't educated enough to know that burning garbage affects everyone in the world.

Most of the toxic chemicals are locally despositing from trash burning, as incomplete burning leaves rather heavy particles. I doubt one's burn barrel in Middleberg, NY effects somebody in Troy, NY signicantly. People in Massachusetts probably recieve far more pollutants from New York from factories around, then Troy gets burn barrel pollution from Middleberg.

you say that a burn barrel produces toxic chemicals but not enough of them to be dangerous. yes, that is one burn barrel. there are 20 million burn barrels in this country according to an EPA report in 1998, producing over 13 million pounds of this crap.

Over about 365 million square miles of the land. That is a lot of land to absorb pollution into. Or I guess you could say, 233.6 billion acres of land. America is a big place.

i don't know if you have ever heard of something called bioaccumulation or biomagnification, but all these dangerous chemicals will eventually work their way up from the bottom of the food chain and end up in people's bodies.

This is happening with all sorts of chemicals. I saw Bill Moyers' special a while back, and he had a report on how the average human has about 200 detectable, man made chemicals in his body. We absorb so much stuff from our outside environment.

The chemical and technological revolutions of the 20th century did many good things for America. But they came at cost, namely unacceptable amounts of certain chemicals getting in the environment, causing problems.

Yet, if a chemical is causing harm that is less costly then clean it up, then we don't consider it to be a signicant problem. This is how society works, we don't have the resources to deal with every issue we face.

all because it wasn't convenient for some hick to take his garbage to the dump or the recycling center.

Or expensive. Should we be pushing marginal farms or families over the edge, by forcing them not to burn trash? Especially when the benifits to forcing them to change their behavior are unclear, or maybe non-existant.

just because some people live in rural areas doesn't give them the right to pollute any more than somebody who lives in a suburban or urban area.

As noted before, pollution is an issue of too much of a chemical being present therefore harmful, not that it simply exists. Farming and the countryside are not being destroyed by some hick burning garbage. It may stink, it may spew lots of pollutants in the air, but it's not damaging our world left and right. Nor are people dying from it.