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Lest We Forget: The comatose economy has generated such intense, widespread anxiety over the last six months that our former No. 1 dread generator, terrorism, has taken a big step down on the media´s and most Americans´ radar screens.

So today´s story from Newsday about the evacuation of a Long Island recycling center after workers there spied a suspicious length of plastic pipe evokes a curious sort of near-term nostalgia. Remember the days when all we had to worry about was keeping our eyes peeled for shifty characters and dubious-looking packages?

Cue the old Mary Hopkin chestnut: "Those were the days my friend, we thought they´d never end ..."

Actually, I should be careful not to make too much light of a potentially dangerous situation. I´m glad those recycling-center workers had their eyes peeled. It´s an excellent reminder for the rest of us. Because how likely is it that the al-Qaedas of the world are lying low waiting for the economy to improve before they get back to doing their despicable life´s work?

Cake, this is Eat It; Eat It, Cake: The Washington Post reports today that the Obama administration´s big renewable-energy push is creating a curious sort of push-and-pull out west, where huge swaths of land stand ready for construction of land-intensive green-energy projects, while adjacent huge swaths have been designated off-limits to energy development.

Ned Farquhar, a New Mexico native and recently appointed chief of the Department of the Interior´s Bureau of Land Management, sums up the paradox facing westerners: "Everybody in New Mexico loves the sandhill cranes. We also love our renewable energy. So we have to figure this out."

Indeed they do. And as this story makes clear, Farquhar´s agency has a lot of figuring to do.

Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste & Recycling News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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