Earth Day

Going Green

“All of us have God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet. It must be this voice that is telling me to do something, and I am sure it’s the same voice that is speaking to everybody on this planet—at least, everybody who seems to be concerned about the fate of the world, the fate of this planet.”
Wangari Maathai (Nobel Peace Prize, 2011)

Yesterday was International Earth Day. I spent the afternoon cleaning up the debris of yet another dying tree in my yard. In the last couple of years, I’ve had three huge, hundred-year-old oaks cut down. They died because of drought. In just the last week, I’ve lost one tree completely, and had three enormous limbs fall on my house or in the yard. My trees are in rebellion.

Like Ms. Maathai, I am concerned about where we’re going in relation to the earth. When we’re more concerned with short term gain than long term consequences, there’s no hope for intelligent policy decisions. When we have governments and corporations who want to exploit the earth’s resources, and are willing to cut the tops off mountains, or dump hundred’s of thousand’s of gallons of oil into pristine wetlands doing it, what hope is there for the species that live there? What happens to us if we destroy our planet?

Even if all you do is recycle everything you possibly can, you will contribute to saving and not destroying our ecosystem. Even if you grow one hanging tomato on your porch, you contribute to healthy food production. Even if you refrain from eating meat one day per week, you help cut down on the need for industrial feed lots. If you map out an efficient route that gets all your errands done in one trip, you help to drop the amount of carbon dioxide generated by unnecessary driving. If we simply stopped buying bottled water in a country where safe, clean water flows through our taps, we would cut down on the thousands of tons of plastic waste dumped into our landfills every year. It’s not that hard to go green. Each of us must listen to the voice that is telling us to do something; even if it is something small.

In the spirit,
Jane