Bruce Kingsbury, Director

This article first appeared June 22, 2026 in The Journal Gazette 

As Director of the Waterfield Environmental Resources Center and concerned human, I strive to provide frequent, science-based commentary on topics relating to sustainability and the natural environment. However, I go through periods where I don’t. 

Reflecting, I find myself overwhelmed by the astounding array of problems we are facing and the aggressive efforts of some to remove environmental protections in the name of promoting growth. Wetland loss, loosening of environmental protections, diesel generators, quarries, etc. On top of a hostile environment towards the environment, we also face widespread social and financial inequities, the decline of democracy, the demonization of science, and even a degradation of civility. It is depressing. And unrelenting.

And so I withdraw. As relates to environmental issues, this has been termed conservation depression, and it is a self-preservation reaction to the unrelenting grief and anxiety about the state of things. I think many can relate, either with respect to environmental challenges or some other arena that is daunting to them. So if you feel this way, know you are not alone.

I am certainly not advocating for throwing in the towel, just being pragmatic about the situation. And we also know that without hope, we tend to resign ourselves and withdraw.  “Whatever I do won’t affect anything” is a common refrain.  

But things are not hopeless. Locally, I observe a growing interest in environmental concerns over the last ten years, brought on in part by a refocus on our rivers as assets rather than liabilities, and pride about the successes of entities such as ACRES and Little River Wetlands Project. 

Resistant to data centers has emerged as a coalescing element in Fort Wayne and across the country, and the stalling of the quarry project in the Little River valley shows that development does not always prevail at the expense of the environment. 

It turns out that the degree of engagement by the community required to effect change is lower than you might think. It may encourage you to hear that a review by Harvard’s Erica Chenowith of hundreds of nonviolent, sustained political uprisings revealed that every movement that actively engaged more than 3.5% of the population was successful. 

That value is perhaps so low because those that we hear from are just the tip of an iceberg of the disaffected who are otherwise not voicing their opinion. And, thankfully, the same research has shown that nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed. 

Centola and colleagues published a paper in Science in 2018 that showed that when around 25% of a population was motivated to promote a reasonable social change, it could prevail. The takeaway from this type of work is that if a subset of the population is motivated to stand for reasonable change, they will succeed. So one step towards affecting change is to actually express your opinion – as publicly as you can manage.

Centola’s work found that multiple connections facilitate effectiveness. The more pathways – meetings, social media, coffee chats, the more resilient the momentum. This impact is observed in the data center and quarry concerns.

At the individual level, it may also help to stay focused. Given the array of offenses these days, I suggest picking one or a few topics to focus one’s energy on so as not to become exhausted. And overly distributing one’s personal resources may be ineffective anyway. 

I also recommend staying informed so as to be able to speak with authority. Whatever the topic, seek multiple sources of information. Regardless of one’s position on a topic, credibility is an important component of persuasion, unless just making things up is satisfactory to you. And focus on the issue, not the people involved. 

Ultimately, decisions about larger issues like climate change, land use planning and environmental policy are largely made by our governmental representatives. For better or worse, those individuals may be motivated by financial drivers and a desire to be reelected. But they do need to be elected, and an educated populace has a great deal to say about that. 

Bruce Kingsbury, Director

This article first appeared May 20, 2026 in The Journal Gazette

A refrain I often hear is that “Indiana is good for business.” The statement is also commonly presented as clearly the way to go, and why aren’t we all on board? The fact of the matter is that Indiana really is great for business. The concern I have, however, is whether those benefits get passed on to the general public, or are often received by the rest of us as costs.

So how is Indiana good for business? Indiana recruits new businesses and encourages those here to stay in a variety of ways. Indiana has no inventory tax and amongst the lowest corporate taxes in the country. Tax incentives are provided to incentivize choosing to locate here rather than somewhere else. 

Indiana has also done a variety of things to reduce “red tape” so that it is easier to get things done as a business. This last point is perhaps my focus here. Removing roadblocks to prosperity sounds great.  

So what are the problems? The problems stem from the fact that nothing is free and that we are trading long-term environmental and human health for short-term profit. And then there is the issue of who gets the profit and who pays for it. The “tragedies of the commons” are pervasive. Shared resources are exploited by the few at the expense of the many.

The genesis of this article is our abandonment of environmental protections, but once you go down that rabbit hole it becomes clear that we also have additional issues relating to health, education and quality of life. Reducing taxes, red tape and restrictive policies do promote business. They also reduce the accountability for impacts to shared resources, the availability of capital to address environmental challenges, and result in unreasonably distributing the costs of development across the community. The developer makes the profit, and we share the cost. I refer to this as the “socialization of waste.” Socialism is a bad word around here, but it appears to be fine when it comes to pollution.

What are some of the outcomes of these practices? A quick exploration of the internet, something that any of us can duplicate in a few minutes – just use multiple sources! - is sobering. Indiana is “number one” or at least on the podium in a variety of ways. We are ranked as having the most polluted rivers in the country. I would certainly not swim in Fort Wayne’s rivers, for example, although I like kayaking on them. We are third worst overall in pollution, saved somewhat there from westerly winds that make our air pollution only seventh worst in the country. So that is the soup you are living in.  

Even if polluted rivers and the critters that live in them are not high on your list of concerns, human health – your health – might be. Longevity and infant mortality rates are proxy rates for the human condition. People live longer and survive childhood at higher rates when their environment is healthy and they are taken care of. We rank 40th lowest in the country in terms of longevity. A few years ago we were 7th highest in terms of infant mortality. Currently we are out of the top ten – progress!  

You may be presented with the premise that protecting the environment drags down the economy and costs jobs. I suppose it does impede short term gains sometimes. As for jobs, it may just change the nature of what jobs are available. The jobs logic is a red herring, intended to encourage focusing on the right now instead of the long game.  

If you are still not convinced that we might be on the wrong track, how else might we measure success? Your savings? Quality of life? Happiness? Only you know how much you have stashed away, but we consistently rank in the 30s out 50 in metrics relating to quality of life and happiness. Occasionally higher, more often lower.

Hot button issues at the moment are data centers and an aggregate quarry which may become the new southern gateway to Fort Wayne. They are a timely and convenient examples of what I am writing about. However, to be very clear, I am not taking the position that they are breaking any rules. To my knowledge, they are not. They are just working the system we have in place.

Instead, the heart of my message is that lax state (and federal) policies fail to protect us and place elements of the costs of development more on the general public than on the developer. And, unfortunately, we are also culpable because we vote the way we do, and look the other way when we might not.