Forum dedicated to increasing awareness of green living through beneficial dialogue.

You know, I'm not sure. I've started four or five different ideas but they all have problems with them, so I'm just not sure what I'd do if I could because there would need to be certain provisions made or situations accounted for.

I don't think that it is so much about making a law as much as it is giving the laws on the books teeth. As an example the penelty for littering in the majority of states is 500-1000 dollars... How many people are actually fined? Why, because you can't catch them and when litterers are caught there are "more important things for the police to do than write a ticket for littering"... EPA protections are limited buy funding levels, Fish and Game laws are limited in efficey due to funding too. Make more laws? No... I want the ones already on the books enforced and the people of the country to actually follow them.

The enforceable issue is a big one, and that was part of my hesitation as well. We don't have enough capability to monitor and enforce.

I'll take this opportunity to blow off some steam. If I could make "1law" about the environment right now, it would be to outlaw commercials on TV that try to sway the "low-information" folk about "the environment". I've seen an advert several times, and what it is touting, I'm not sure, but it says something like this: "Solar and wind power are fine, but the sun goes down each night and the wind doesn't blow every day." It's just pitiful that there is still so much ignorance over alternative power sources.

I would ban people from smoking outside, it man not have the greatest impact on the environment, but i am sick of getting second hand smoke in my face. If it stops people from polluting their bodies they may be more willing to deal with pollution to the environment.

but if they are not allowed to smoke outside, and they are not allowed to smoke inside... where do they smoke Deltic?

isn't that restricting personal freedom? I'm not a smoker, and nor is anyone else in my family.. but it seems to me that smokers are haevily taxed by the government, who use them to raise revenue, and yet are not allowed to actually smoke anywhere but their own living rooms... besides.. i don't see that cigarette smoke has much in the way of environmental impact? Personal health yes..

i don't like getting smoke in my face either mind you

They could smoke in their own home or their own private car. Personal freedom shouldn't outweigh the greater good of the population. They ban drinking in the street in many places so there is a president for restricting personal freedom in public places. As fo environmental impact, secondary smoking is harmful to health, if you leave a public building you have to fight your way through a huddle of smokers standing on the pavement and you are subjected to their stinking smoke. You even see it happening outside hospitals. The cigarette ends get left all over the pavement they are unsightly and they are full of bad chemicals that will leech out when it rains. Also when smokers walk along holding a cigarette they hold it down facing behind them, my kids have had their coats burned in crowded shopping streets and when she was younger my daughter came very close to getting a burn near her eye.

Where I live they had to pass an ordinance stating that people can't smoke within ten feet of the front door. If you can believe it, the smokers hereabout would stand blocking the entrances, blowing their smoke INTO the buildings.
I was a smoker for more years than I care to admit, but I never felt that I needed to blow my smoke in anyone's (much less a child's) face, or space. When I smoked, I did it at home. I realised that I was damaging my own health, which was my business; at no time was I under the illusion that I was free to wreck someone elses health.

Thanks Molly, that is really what I was trying to get at. I think if people can be made to be more respinsible about the things that are very obviously impacting on other people such as smoking, they will gradually become more receptive to many other environmental messages.