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Recycling, renewables important to protecting the planet

In Bayside, I find the chore of separating garbage relatively pleasurable — relatively, compared to out east. In Amagansett, on the east end of Long Island, we pay $50 each year for the privilege of separating our garbage, glass, plastics and paper.

This exercise is called recycling: hate the effort, love the goal. The benefits of recycling are minimizing as much garbage as possible, which would otherwise contaminate the soil and oceans of our planet as opposed to reusing it in various forms.

And I think it is great even if it does require holding your breath for an extended period while running from one bin to the next on a humid day. I like to think it is the smell of patriotism, but I am certain any patriot would be offended.

I am puzzled as to why it is that most have accepted the benefits of recycling garbage, a never-ending supply, believing in its benefits while nevertheless still managing to accept the raping our planet for its limited supply of prehistoric fossil and mineral fuels. This is done by the leveling of mountains for dirty coal, polluting our oceans as well as our soil with the brainless mantra “Drill, baby, drill,” fouling our drinking water with fracking, having oil pipelines that threaten to rupture at any time carry filthy sand oil across our country and contaminating our air with their by-products.

The profiteers of this Neanderthal approach to creating energy have spent fortunes conning the gullible public into thinking any alternative to this primitive source is robbing our country of its greatness. We subsidize these destroyers while they rape and reap the greatest profit in history.

There are intelligent alternatives and, though it is impossible to immediately convert completely to such sources, having had their growth stifled by lobbyists paid by dirty energy source suppliers and buying the allegiance of our representatives, the sooner we shed their power and the seats of their political benefactors, the sooner we can take a deep, clean breath of satisfaction.

Wind, sun, geothermal, tidal and other sources are reusable, sustainable and do not change the physical nature of the world in which we live. At the same time, we must keep developing greater efficiency for vehicles and equipment that had in the past consumed energy produced at a behemoth’s appetite.

It is an all-of-the-above solution which will draw us out of our caveman mentality and deliver us from the dark ages to a future enlightened America.

Nicholas Zizelis

Amagansett, L.I.