More Trash in Oklahoma

 

On November 12, 2019, members of a fraternity at Southeastern Oklahoma State University cleaned up garbage that had been thrown along the wooded roadside along a 0.2-mile stretch of Wilson Street down from the biology building where I work.

We did not count the pieces of garbage, but there were six large bags, which means several hundred pieces of garbage, some of it large and some of it dangerous. (At least this year we did not find discarded syringes.) Simple math indicates that the garbage intensity (I think I just made that term up right now) is about 1500 pieces of garbage per mile.

I assumed that this entire amount had built up during the two years since our last garbage pickup, conducted by a sorority. But when I drove down this stretch of street five days later, on November 17, I could see twenty large new pieces of garbage.

From this I conclude that when I see garbage along Oklahoma streets and highways, much of it is newly-deposited, rather than an accumulation from many months.

How can we expect the average Oklahoman to know or care about evolution, global warming, or the environment, if the world outside of their immediate experience—even land that belongs to their community or their neighbors—has no value whatsoever? I am happy to report that there is a significant minority of Oklahomans who do care, but is it any wonder that we are having little if any effect on the community and political life of our state?

 

The preceding appeared in my science blog. For this blog, I must add that rural Oklahoma is considered to be the most intensely Republican and intensely Christian part of America. If Republican Christians completely take over the rulership of our country—something they fully expect God to make happen—you can expect it to have many evil characteristics, not the least of which will be that it will be smothered in garbage. This is just one more way in which Republicans hate altruism.