Ex-EPA Chief Whitman Wants Carbon Cap
By: Albert Bozzo | Senior Features Editor
You do a lot of public speaking. What’s the message that you take to consumers?
While they may not think it makes a big difference to them and while they might not see a huge impact on their electricity bills from the smaller things right away, cumulatively it has a huge impact—like when you change your light bulbs to energy efficient ones.
Finally, back to the farm. You've done some interesting things there, as well.
We got my parents to dedicate the development rights to the New Jersey Conservation Foundation and subsequently since my husband and I have taken over the farm, we put the hay fields into what’s called the Grassland Reserve Program, a bird preservation program, where you guarantee you will not harvest your hay until after the 15th of July and that means the grassland birds have an opportunity to hatch out and fledge out and you only get one cutting of hay.
When you are that close to nature and you have crops in the field and a river running through the property, you get an appreciation for nature and how fragile it is and how easily it is to change the balance. So you become a little bit more sensitive to leaving things cleaner than how you found them. And that was always a big thing of my father’s: you should always leave a place better than you found it.