In the Age of Disaster, Trinkets and Artifice Matter

Global warming is real. So is the harm caused by the manufacture, use and disposal of the synthetic turf field lying in the middle of my children's future.

Failing to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 sets in motion a chain of events we cannot alter and that will hit like a tsunami in the world that rightfully belongs to coming generations.

My children and grandchildren are at stake. They cannot afford to pay the price of selfish indulgence and disdain for future generations for the sake of a few more soccer games a year. So I am calling us out. I mean to leave them a world worth living in and will allow no amount of political grandstanding to interfere. Having thought deeply about my words, I say that the selfish fools, the adults, “proud supporters” of the fake turf need to get a clue and work toward the hasty demise of that field, join in promoting sanity, or get out of the way so concerned adults can do what’s needed. Future generations need us to grab hold of sanity and plant it firmly in the ground, to finally set long overdue essential environmental limits. There is no second shot at this.
When the fake grass deals, deceitfully engineered from "Open Space" funds, were dangled before you, you had the opportunity to look the cynical political and corporate bastards in the eye and say, "No. You cannot finance your greed by offering me and my children a hand job dressed in a plastic grass skirt, and externalizing the costs of the sleazy encounter onto future generations."

It is on us, the generation that unleashed MTV among countless forms of morbid self-absorption onto our own children, to shut off the sewer pipes of greed and teach them how to sacrifice flashy trash so they have a chance at tasting the true sweetness of a life in balance with the earth for generations to come. That is what global warming really demands. The jig is up. So I am moving full throttle to build a better world, starting here in my backyard, Highland Park.

To the political operators who brokered these turf contracts and delivered the scourge of environmental decline in the Trojan Horse of open space funding: I will not let you stamp out my children's future by pretending we have any more room for trading the environment and their health in the name of greed. I plan to use the tools of local democracy in action to:

• Plant the 1800 trees needed to mitigate the 56 tons of CO2 emissions that result from the production, installation, and use of the fake grass field.
• Establish school and Borough policies to ensure that natural grass fields are always offered to our children when participating in compulsory phys ed classes.
• Achieve a full accounting of how this project was allowed to move forward without public debate of fake versus natural grass; proof of need; cost analysis of maintenance, replacement and disposal costs; or involvement of the relevant commissions or boards.
• Ensure people know the health risks of latex exposure, dramatic surface heat during warm weather, exposure to tons of ground-up used tires containing cancer-causing and hormone-disrupting toxic chemicals, torsion injuries, and potential antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.
• Offer transparency to our children regarding the bad news that they’ll be paying the environmental costs, replacement and disposal costs, and the costs of the entire county’s access to the field in perpetuity.
• Publicize the actual contract and warranty between the Borough and the field manufacturer.
• Demand procedures for governance that consider fully the health, environmental, and generational impacts of "doing business" in our borough with full appreciation that we live in a time of real environmental crisis, which demands we teach our children how to sacrifice wisely and treat with absolute seriousness the risks to them and generations to come.

Bruno Oriti is a 19-year resident of Highland Park and the parent of two children attending Highland Park Schools.