Why efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay are a sobering indicator

The July 21 Metro article Farm, coastline pollution part of Moores targeted Chesapeake Bay cleanup reminded me that the efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and its estuaries are a sobering indicator of our inability to address human impact on our environment. As a volunteer for the organization Save the Bay in the early 1970s and subsequent efforts to address the degraded bay, I heard so many excuses for not making contributions or changes in lifestyles to stop the deterioration. I doubt many people have the courage or fortitude required to make a difference. The environmental conditions and challenges we face are far more dire than the pollution of the Potomac and the Susquehanna rivers, yet we have not achieved anywhere near the public awareness that is required to alter the climatic changes. What we are left with are reactive-responsive patchwork approaches that will only address our current, individual realities rather than realize more far-reaching solutions. Much misplaced blame and ire will be assigned to our government for these conditions, suggesting that the government is something other than ourselves. If we could not affect the conditions of our rivers, streams and bays with decades of effort, what chance, if any, do we have of positively affecting the climate? Making any appreciable, beneficial dent in our inevitable environmental challenges will take societal changes (consumption, production and economy) that we, as corporations and as Americans, simply refuse to make voluntarily. Derek Havens , Mason Neck