[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 52 (Tuesday, April 24, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E596]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

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                         HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 24, 2001

  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, Oliver Wendell Holmes once said ``Pretty 
much all the honest truth telling in the world is done by children.'' I 
believe we here in Congress could certainly learn something about 
energy, the environment, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from a 
young girl named Sophie Brown of Anchorage, Alaska, the subject of the 
following thoughtful and thought-provoking ``Letter to the Editor'' 
from her mother, published in the Anchorage Daily News on April 5, 
2001:

                Children Put Earth Before Parents' SUVs

                           (By Barbara Brown)

       I pulled the car into the driveway, walked toward the door 
     of the house, and Sophie threw open the storm door and 
     shouted, ``How do you feel about drilling in the Arctic 
     National Wildlife Refuge?''
       ``Hold on,'' I said, ``let me pull the car into the 
     garage.''
       ``But this is important,'' she insisted. ``Yes or no?''
       Just another pleasant ``welcome home'' in the Wiepking-
     Brown household.
       One evening, Tim was talking about something over the 
     dinner table, and I must have become distracted because next 
     thing I knew, he was discussing scientists and cannibalism in 
     Papua New Guinea.
       ``Cannibalism?'' I said, really confused. ``What are you 
     talking about?''
       Sophie piped up: ``It's the slow, deadly spread of mad cow 
     disease.''
       By this point, I was really feeling disconnected. ``What 
     slow, deadly spread of mad cow disease?'' I asked. And Sophie 
     pointed to Newsweek magazine. ``The Slow, Deadly Spread of 
     Mad Cow Disease'' was right there, on the cover.
       ``You read the article?'' Tim asked, incredulous.
       ``Yes,'' Sophie said. ``We're discussing mad cow disease in 
     school.''
       Tim loves this about Sophie. He loves discussing current 
     events. In school, he'd had a lot of trouble with reading 
     until they introduced newspapers in his classroom. He went 
     from nonreader to the boy everyone wanted on the current-
     events team.
       But back to ANWR. In Sophie's class, all the kids were 
     opposed to drilling except one boy who thought the money 
     might help education in the affected communities. I wondered 
     if they'd seen pictures of cute little caribou. I asked, 
     ``Was it because of the caribou?''
       ``Some,'' Sophie said, ``but we know about the differences 
     of opinion between the groups of people there; we know about 
     how much oil they might find there. Mostly, it's because of 
     the Earth, the wilderness.''
       One friend of mine said her daughter's class is ready to 
     die on its swords to defend the refuge. Ask the children, and 
     they want to keep it safe from drilling. Is it because 
     they're so young, so naive, so limited in understanding? Is 
     it because they're not paying the bills? Talk to them--
     they're well-versed in the facts. It's just the way they 
     assign priorities: Kids put the Earth into the equation.
       Tim went looking for a car recently and was considering a 
     sport utility. In horror, Sophie shouted, ``No, not an SUV! 
     They are terribly wasteful of the Earth's resources!''
       Don't ask me where she read that--probably the same places 
     you have. It's just that kids don't let it slide by, don't 
     let it fall away under considerations of image, size, power 
     and, oh yes, by the way, it isn't very fuel-efficient.
       So she sees SUVs on the road and she asks, ``Are those 
     people selfish, or do they just not know better?'' She used 
     to ask the same thing about people she saw littering.
       I hear on the radio that 75 percent of Americans are 
     worried about global warming, but the United States won't 
     agree to a treaty to try to control it. Our president says it 
     would be too hazardous for our economy.
       Every day, everyone evaluates, decides what priority to 
     assign things and then makes up his or her mind. But for 
     older people, the Earth wasn't and isn't a thing to worry 
     about. It's just ``there,'' like adding zero to both sides of 
     an equation. Other things--costs, duration, employment 
     statistics, capitalization, demographics--those are all 
     factors to be considered. The Earth? It just keeps rotating 
     around the sun. You've seen one tree, you've seen them all. 
     Or, you see no trees, there's nothing there.
       Find me a kid who doesn't know about recycling. Find me a 
     kid who doesn't know why he or she recycles, why it's 
     important. OK, maybe they are just little do-gooders, but 
     they're little do-gooders entirely different from the way 
     little kids used to be. While my mom told people to turn 
     their lights off for the war effort, these kids turn lights 
     off ``for the Earth.''
       Once, many years ago, a summer roommate said to me, ``If 
     the U.S. uses most of the Earth's resources, then if 
     conditions are going to improve for the rest of the world, we 
     would have to end up using less, right?''
       I thought so.
       ``Well,'' he decided, ``I don't want to use less of 
     anything. So I guess the rest of the world can't improve.''
       I am eager to see the world these children make. Oh, I know 
     that some may grow up to think that recycling aluminum cans 
     is a pain in the neck or that they want as big a gas guzzler 
     as the next guy. All those ``other'' factors may outweigh 
     their desire for wilderness, for conservation, for clean air 
     and water.
       But right now--bet on it--children are putting the Earth 
     first. Even if that changes--even if they put the Earth 
     second or third or fourth--we can be sure they'll never 
     forget about putting the Earth in the equation. How will they 
     feel if we don't leave them much Earth to worry about?
       Barbara Brown lives and writes in Anchorage.

       

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