From pipelines to tar sands, green economics to global warming, crazy weather to melting ice caps. the environment has remained on everyone's mind despite global financial melt-downs and growing anti-science politics.

People care. They care about the future. And they care about the world their children - and their children's children - will live in.

The current generations are living with a huge responsibility. Some aspects of our environment are teetering on the edge of.

environment are teetering on the edge of. That's where the complexity of environmental issues kick in: on the edge of what?

And on which edge are we teetering? In the 1990s the world recognized and addressed the break-down of the planet's life-sustaining ozone layer. The problem was clarified, and more importantly, direct and immediate solutions were identified.

The ozone layer isn't in the kind of shape we'd like it to be. but through a concerted effort of humanity - albeit a humanity that created the problem in the first place - it has survived.

General deterioration of the environment is a far more complex - perhaps even ambiguous - problem.

There are so many factors that may be involved in environmental changes that appear to be taking hold of the planet that even the vast majority of scientists who agree that humanity must be mobilized immediately for the sake of its own survival, are having trouble identifying how best to tackle the problems, and which aspects of the possible solutions are most crucial.

This weekend hundreds of Langley Township residents did their bit to make a difference, safely disposing of hazardous materials and other assorted environmental mini-disasters-in-waiting.

It was a small undertaking for most of those people. But it was nevertheless an important commitment to the envirnoment.