[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Wotsit
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:07:04 -0700
No, actually, you are NOT one great big highway. Have you ever been to
Montana? Wyoming? Idaho? Kansas? North Dakota? Minnesota? These are
HUGE states in area and they have no population.
As of 2006, Minnesota was the 21st most populous state. Granted that
northern Minnesota is sparsely populated, relative to the rest of the
state, the Twin Cities metro area is densely populated, and has all of
the trials and joys of any US metropolitan area.
For that matter, MN has a larger population than OR, which is thinly
populated east of the Cascades. This side of the Cascades we have all
the pollution, fouled streams, rapacious developers and despoiled
wetlands one could want. Even the Willamette, which runs right through
Portland is a toxic sewer.
That a state is thinly populated says nothing about the air and water
pollution generated there. Montana (935,670) and Wyoming (last, with
509,294) have mines and refineries that would make a sultan blush.
There are no freeways in northern Michigan or northern Minnesota; but in
each case the rest of the state makes up for that, where despoilization
(a word I learned from JL) is concerned, and I believe that it wasn't
the mere existence of freeways (or toll roads) that Irene was concerned
with, but the environmental damage to which they contribute.
Robert Paul
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