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to attend to business as usual. The attitude that we are born into this world and shouldn't stress out about things we can't change seems to be the unfortunate norm in these times of waste and blissful environmental ignorance. The solution is for us as a species to become more concerned and realize that our trash has consequences. We must also get the approval of administrators in implementing various recycling and waste policies. And yes, the richest countries which use the most resources need to lead the way.

Many businesses may feel they don't have the incentive to try new, more environmentally-friendly practices, and governments must decide if and how to tax the people to rectify the actions of all entities in society with an impact on our surroundings.

Back in December of 2007, I came across a news article. Norway was announcing it was going to invest millions of dollars in the effort to preserve rainforests. Try as I might I couldn't quite figure out exactly what their plan was, and I wondered if this was just another politically-correct public relations campaign by another industrialized country trying to look worldly and sophisticated.

I can't help thinking it's pretty sad that governments feel the need to spend enormous amounts of tax money on preserving the environment, while corporations seem to have free reign to exploit it. It's sort of a weird run-around chasing-your-tail routine. But it seems to have just crept up on the human race, and no one wants to take any individual blame or responsibility on a wide scale. People work in various industries in the industrialized world which, if not directly involved in deforestation, use paper products (and TONS of them) on a daily basis. Even in the days of email, companies continue to use incalculable amounts of paper daily on a worldwide basis. I wonder how logging companies ever got the right to destroy such valuable resources without some sort of interference by governments. It's happened, though, and now we need to accept that and find ways to minimize the impact of such wasteful corporations.

Many companies are charged for recycling their paper; they have to pay other private companies to take it away. A good way to encourage companies to recycle paper would be to help companies with decent tax breaks for participating in paper recycling programs, so that businesses do not have to pay for recycling themselves. Of course I'd love to say the businesses should do the right thing and just pay for their own

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