Happy Earth Day!
This time of year is always busy for my family and myself. My wife is an environmental educator and Earth week is like the Super Bowl for Environmental educators. We always attend trash pick-ups, tree plantings, festivals, garden-plantings, etc.
I want to highlight three environmental goals which I hope to achieve in the General Assembly. They may seem a little eccentric, but bear with me. In NASCAR when they want to lighten a car by a pound, they do it by shaving 1/100th of a pound from a hundred places. In order to clean the environment, we'll have to do it by shaving pollution and waster from a hundred places.
-Pass the legislation necessary to allow residents to install clean power on their properties and sell the excess power back to the grid. I know that we are in the process of doing this and that many parts of the legislation are already in place. I also know that when we get it right, green power will boom in Maryland. Because if there is money to be made, people will get on board, regardless of ideology.
-Kill sytrofoam. Either by passing a tax on the use, an outright ban, or mandating that it be recyclable. I recognize that styrofoam has value but using it to transport greasy fries from point A to point B and then placing it in a landfill for the next millenium strikes me as a poor use of resources.
-Deregulate the cemetery business to allow green funerals and create an industry that would profit by preserving open spaces. Tax embalming as it essentially pumps the deceased full of toxic chemicals which are then placed into the ground.
And for the Earth Day humbugs out there, go insulate your attic anyway, you'll get a federal tax credit.
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