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Statement Of Jeude Landhauser
Environmental Protection Agency
Aging Initiative Public Listening Session
Iowa City, Iowa
April 15, 2003
Jeude Landhauser
Heritage Area Agency on Aging
Heritage Area Agency on Aging
One of the ways we pass along wisdom is with storytelling. Today's topic brings to mind the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. We all know this story. In it, an emperor chooses to run around completely naked while believing a tricky tailor's promise that he had sewn, and the emperor was really wearing, clothes made of the finest threads. It took a child to say what everybody knew - that the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes at all.
Children say what they see when we choose not to believe our own eyes. When our children ask about that stuff coming out of the smokestack, we tell them that it's dirty and it will make them sick. We all know that pollution makes people sick, yet, collectively we choose to accept the word of tricky polluters when they justify their polluting.
The reason that the EPA is developing a national agenda for the environment and aging, and the reason the rest of us showed up today, is that we all know that the cumulative effects of pollution on our bodies over the years can and will make many people sick, even die - including some of us here today. Yet the EPA will be asked and has been asked to believe that polluters should not be held accountable and they/we/America can't afford to sufficiently address it. The dollars will be spent, either on antipollution devices or on health care for older Americans, which we can't afford either.
Look how long it took us to be able to say that smoking causes cancer. "Everybody" knew this was true. Research had proven it. It took a court case before we could all "know" what we "knew."
Robert Fulgham, in his essay, "Everything I Ever Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten" includes "Clean up your own messes." What if we held polluters responsible for cleaning up their own messes? The result could be the kind of economic stimulation that this economy needs.
I'm here today to ask the EPA to believe the environmental research over the tricky polluters. I'm here to ask that the National Agenda on the Environment and Aging address what research has proven about the long term effects of the environment on an aging body, not just the impact of aging adults on the environment. Then let's have a real agenda for healthy aging that works to eliminate illness caused by man-made environmental factors. We all know it can be done. We all know that negative forces will work to confound our sensibilities. Let's use our sensibilities anyway so we don't have to wait for the children to tell us that we have no national agenda at all.