Maine’s Environment 1994

We are faced with new challenges as we come to the close of this century. The challenges are:

Preventing Pollution. We need to shift our emphasis from regulating or cleaning up the problem once it has been created to preventing the problem in the first place. Pollution prevention, including resource reduction and recycling, holds great promise and provides a more economic way to protect our environment.

Prioritizing Environmental Protection Problems. We need to set priorities for environmental protection based on comparative risk to address the most serious environmental problems first and wisely allocate our scarce funds.

Approaching Environmental Problems Cooperatively. We need to work collaboratively with industries, individuals and government to create innovative solutions to our environmental problems. The solutions to the problems we face today are interrelated with affordable housing, employment, education, health care and social equity. We need to integrate our efforts to yield the best solutions for all these issues.

Taking Individual Responsibility for Environmental Solutions. We need to take individual responsibility for our actions and their effects on' the -environment. The major contributing sector for many of our environmental problems is no longer major industry. Our air pollution problems come from mobile sources, such as our cars, and water quality is at risk from myriad minor actions collectively called "non-point sources. Individuals must analyze their actions and reach into their pockets to support the environmental values that we hold dear.