A New Relationship Between People, their Government and the Environment...

This blog started from the premise that a Commonwealth should serve the "common wealth".  Subsequent posts detailed areas where the Commonwealth does, indeed, protect its citizens.  An example is where landowners are protected from liability from allowing others to use their land for recreation.  In return, the Commonwealth furthers the interests of the public and natural resource management by promoting the use of land for recreation and allowing resource management such as hunting, furtaking and fishing.

However, in other cases, the Commonwealth has schizophrenically failed to decipher what interest is the most important.  Is it development, or open space?  Is it public or private interests? Do we allow private use of private property under the ruse that development is good, or do we require something more than an assumption that growth is good?

Finally, the posts and musings of this blog have examined the larger key concept of the Public Trust, although in a federal government versus state government vein and specifically with the subject of wildlife.

The point is, it is time the citizens of Pennsylvania - the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania - stop acting like natural resources are unlimited.  It is high time to demand the Commonwealth not allow private interests to strip the Commonwealth's citizens of their "common wealth" and send it to other states and countries for the sole purpose of making and concentrating more wealth in other states and countries.  In essence, the Commonwealth is being treated as a third world country.

This was not always the case.  Pennsylvania's iron furnaces supplied the revolution and its farms fed the populace.  Oil and gas were discovered in Pennsylvania and was first used here to light street lights and heat homes. Although cheap production and abundant supply moved this industry away for a hundred years, it has returned with a vengeance on a citizenry and government woefully unprepared to handle it.  One of the best research facilities in the world on nuclear power exists in the Commonwealth.  Our mountains are covered with wind, we have as many sunny days as cloudy days and we have recognized the value of open space and timber and protected both for our people.

This blog will continue dicussing Pennsylvania's unique relationships with the environment and with companies and persons doing business in the Commonwealth.  It will not attempt to definitively answer the questions about how we as Pennsylvanians want to connect with these issues, but will try to point out where these issues are ripe for discussion and debate.  The goal is to foster this debate and have us form a new environmental consciousness that promotes the "common wealth".