This was written on a flight to see friends, family, and a concert (frequent readers can probably guess the show). High above the ground I find myself grateful for all the people who made systems, ones I don’t think about much and probably wouldn’t understand if I did, work to make this trip safe. We all take for granted much of what we experience daily, from travel to the delivery of goods, the availability of food, and just having the lights on. It all results from people doing the things needed to make systems work.
Someone thinks about the details that keep society moving and it is because of the accumulation of those someones that we live the life that we do. The delivery of public services, especially environmental protection, is an example of something most of us value—who doesn’t want clean air, clean water, and unpolluted lands?—but about which few of us pay attention to until there is a problem.
Nothing good happens by accident, and that is especially true for environmental protection. It takes thought, time, effort and conviction to purchase and protect land, to devise and fund proper wastewater management, to protect current and future water supplies and to restore damaged and degraded waterways and wetlands. If we want a better world, it requires that each of us do more to make the system of environmental protection and restoration work better than it does now.
None of what we all hope to achieve in protecting additional priority lands from development or improving degraded water quality will happen because the system runs on auto pilot and will do it for us. In fact, the opposite is true; neglect and complacency lead to the rise and dominance of systems designed and implemented by those who prioritize private gain over public good.
The choice is, as it always has been, ours to commit to the hard work of protecting an environment that benefits us all. The alternative is stepping aside and letting it all go away. This isn’t new, it just feels a whole lot more pressing in today’s world.
If you are reading this, the good people charged with landing this plane made the aviation system work for me. Now it’s time to get back to collectively doing the good work needed to protect Cape Cod.
