These are crucial times for the environment, and so it is a decisive era for all of us. Our political decisions impact nature and demonstrate lackadaisical or serious commitment to a more balanced healthy planet. When there is an outspoken environmentalist among us, spending personal time and resources to preserve what remains Green for everyone, they could be respected if not honored. How we disagree reveals our worldly experience and knowledge gained, or lack of it. Vilifying the messenger rather than the message, expresses desperation and redirects attention from understanding and problem solving.
In these contentious times when the norm of national debate is housed in ugliness, we need more than ever to be conscious of the tone of local dissension.
Congress ponders a “Green New Deal” while Greenfield counselors are responsible for the remaining greenish entryway to the town. Is it justifiable to use commercial development as a bargaining chip in the effort to build a new library? Why do citizens not actively challenge decisions that bargain with further loss of nature when every green corridor is integral to health?
We hear the claim that more development is needed so that Greenfield can move forward. “Development” invites subjective definitions and therefore subjective analysis. If remaining green strips do not need to be destroyed, how can an argument ensue and be proven if not including someone’s personal gain? this disruption move the library project forward without a bad taste?
Nina Keller
Wendell