This morning, as a number of landowners in Onanole went for their daily walk they were astonished to see that someone overnight had backed up a truck and dumped construction wastes, plastic bottles, coffee cups, and a host of other materials on a walking trail in a local sub-division.

What was astonishing was that anyone today would do something like this anywhere in Manitoba – and avoid having to take the materials to a local landfill.  What was insulting was to drop this material in a local residential sub-division, as if it was a local receptacle for trash.  Lots of metaphors come to mind!  Here is what this pile of garbage looked like.

Construction materials dumped on local walking trail

As we turn the corner of October and are less than 9 weeks from the international meeting of over 190 nations of the world to obtain agreement on a new international climate treaty and reduction of carbon emissions, I am amazed that there are some who still treat our neighborhoods as trash bins. And there are many who treat the planet the same way.  What is needed is a very stiff NO – this is not acceptable –  from the citizens of our community and all over our planet – we need to clean up our messes.  And, those who pollute or do not care need to pay very heavily.  Putting a price on polluters and on the cost of carbon emissions is something that has been missing from our  economic forecasts.  They now need to be accounted for.