Letter: Your front yard

Hubert Humphrey, as quoted in the Pine Knot News last week, said in Cloquet in 1970: “Every lake in this state is part of your front yard. When people start polluting the air, polluting the rivers, dumping their sewage into the lakes and rivers, spewing up their smoke and fumes into the atmosphere, what they’re really doing is taking a great big garbage truck and just driving up to your house and dumping it.”

This quote gives people the realistic perspective of what is happening in our world today. No one wants a garbage truck to come and dump trash in their front yard. Would they? However, no one seems to care about a “garbage truck” dumping trash and killing our earth with factories and automobiles.

... We as a human race allow smoke to fill our atmosphere, and oil to permeate through our rivers, lakes, and oceans.

Right now, with everyone staying indoors due to COVID-19, Earth is finally getting a break. Rivers in Venice are filling up with fish again, and the Himalayas are now fully visible for the first time in decades due to reduced air pollution.

When this pandemic is over, will we be able to maintain this state of a healthy environment? What can we do as a population to save this planet? What can you as a person do to keep your yard clean?

Cloquet High School sophomore Ilei Benson wrote this for Mr. Richardson’s Honors English 10 class.