WISCONSIN'S CULTURE OF WATER PROVIDES A COMMON POINT OF FOCUS TO PRESERVE THE HEALTH OF FAMILIES ALONG WITH THE PAPER AND PACKAGING INDUSTRY
PART 2
Water is everything in Wisconsin. There are about 180 organizations in the state with water as a focus. Having lived in both Georgia and Wisconsin for much of my life, I can tell you that, by comparison, water in Georgia is NOT everything, as it is in Wisconsin. Georgia has about zero natural lakes and there is no trillion gallon Oglala aquifer undergound. Water unites just about everyone in the dairy state. The sublime beauty of it, the fish and wildlife that live in it, the farming that water supports, and the industries that use it and abuse it. Now the state is facing a come to Jesus moment with PFAS for the foreseeable future, and it may prove to be a uniting factor of life and death. Could there be potential to resolve divisive politics, for which Wisconsin is also famous for inventing? We can choose to fight or we can fix, to paraphrase Joe Biden.
If you've heard of the Wisconsin Idea, it's essentially about collaboration between UW and the rest of the state, or to quote UW directly: "Education should influence people's lives beyond the classroom." What's happened over the past 20 years is politics, to erode collaboration and trust between groups and citizens, apparently with a goal of deliberately creating chaos and instability on the part of Republicans. The politics of water trumps the politics of identity and that's where we're at.
Then we have in Madison hyper-wokeism, where identity politics begins to impact public dialogue, along with social media taking full advantage of the chaos for the purpose of more clicks, not in the public interest. Humor, the uniquely American tradition of self reflection, is very risky. Someone may be triggered. Maybe PFAS will trigger people into taking action to protect the water.
Now UW is just launching a campaign to overcome its appearance of elitism. I have to say that it's not just UW, but all academia has become much smarter and more isolated, or elitist, by their hypercompetitive culture, all seeking research funding. In the 1960s, if a scientist made a statement, it was generally accepted as fact. Now with PFAS, why should rural residents suddenly trust scientists when they show up and start evangelizing? Especially when it's the scientists at 3M and DuPont who created this mess?
This is where industry can make a huge impact, and by industry I don't mean 3M or DuPont or WalMart. In Wisconsin there are any number of family businesses that have grown into major producers of paper and plastic food packaging. Some of them with quite large facilities, but inside it may be the 3rd generation of the original founder, and who has established a specialty to fit today's food packaging technology. These are the companies that are facing the risk of PFAS, and the communities and jobs are at stake, all because of this family of Perfluoroalkyls that now pervade our entire world. Its their resolve to face the issue and take the lead on showing what collaboration looks like.
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