The other day I read an article in the Oshawa Express with the headline that wood burning chimneys are not allowed in Oshawa without a permit.( Wood burning Chimneys are open free standing ceramic fire places). I think that this is a very good decision to disallow them, since they are polluting our backyards. And I just hope that the city is not intending to issue any such permits, because our air needs not any extra pollutant. It is bad enough that our cars, our planes and our industries are polluting our air and the whole of our environment. A city or a region cannot ban these types of pollution. So we have to live with it until we find a better way. But small polluters like the chimney and even smoking in cars or other places were other people will have to breath the polluted air, should be banned,because it is not necessary, but does a lot of harm to people.

But since we are talking of small polluters, which are not necessary, we should not forget that we are running a lot of equipment on small gasoline powered engines, which were not in use 50 years ago, equipment which was then only hand powered. The first thing that comes in mind is the gas powered lawn mower and lawn trimmer.

I can remember that 50 years ago nobody had a gas powered lawn mower. Even the professional landscaper was using hand-powered lawn mower. Many high school students earned good money during the summer holidays, by being hired, by these landscaping companies. I myself bought also a hand mower more than fifty years ago and I still use it to this day. Our city properties are so small, that a hand mower can mow a lawn in less than an hour. It is a good exercise; it creates no noise pollution, no pollution of the air or the soil. How much more peaceful could the weekends be?

These are only two pieces of equipment, which are not absolute necessary. When we think a little about this waste, I am sure that we would find some more gas-guzzlers, which are not important but very damaging to our environment. Just think about the senseless running of dirt bikes, all terrain vehicles or snowmobiles? These machines have their use in emergencies, but should be discouraged for joy rides. The same as all stockcar races and sport car races should be discouraged, since they are also big polluters.

Our biggest problem in our society is that everybody depends on the city hall or on other authorities to forbid or legislate against obvious things, which are destroying our environment. Instead of thinking for ourselves and taking the initiative, we wait for others to make up our mind.

We should not ask what can the world do for us, we should ask ourselfves what can we do for our world. We all should give it a thought

In order to really give this problem of pollution a thought, we have to realizing that before we even started the physical pollution of our environment, we were mentally polluted by advertising, which brainwashed us in that respect, so that we could only think that all these polluting machines are really necessary for the advancement of humanity.

There are still other polluting factors in our world; for example that of radiation from which we do not know the exact damage created. There are especially the high frequency cell phones, which are damaging to our insect world and also to us human beings.

Just think about it!