I heart the Earth

By now everybody should know that its Earth Day.  I like Earth Day.  I like that we have a day that is supposed to celebrate what this third rock from the sun gives us.  The water, the trees, the sky, the animals, etc.

But I know that a lot of people view this as an atagonistic holiday.  A day granola chomping hippies created to make everybody feel bad about how much we are destroying this planet, blah blah blah!  And they get mean and crochety about it and start saying that they are going to do anti-positive things to help the planet and that those of us who are doing things are just deluding ourselves.  And yes, I know that they may not actually do some of the stuff that they threaten - but they've still put that negativity out to the universe.

All I have to say is doing something is better than doing nothing at all. 

People are deluding themselves if they think that we're going to have this endless supply of resources.  We don't.  If you think of the big pictures, it's a small spec of finite material.  Someday it's going to run out.  We may not be alive for that, but it's going to happen.

The other thing that is going to happen if we keep on going the way we are going - we're going to erode our own way of life.  Have people seen the pictures of people living in favelas in the landfills.  Someday that could be everybody- and not just the rediculously poor folk. 

I'm not good at debating.  I'm not going to throw out a bunch of nerdy facts.  But I can tell you that during the summer - I hate going out because the air tastes and feels so chemically that I can't breathe.  And that I've seen the lake that my grandparents cabin is on grow smaller and smaller (and that's not just because I've grown up).  And it makes me sad to think that people close to me have gown out and actively participated in the extinction of an animal because their company told them that was the best place for a pipeline that will only provide 10 years of gas or something like that. 

We should all do what we can to try to preserve what we have.  People do what they can to financially secure their way of life - shouldn't we be trying to do that physically too??

I'm not a perfect rolemodel of course.  I leave my computer on all the time and forget to turn out lights, and I really like eating hamburgers and wearing leather jackets.  But at the very least I recycle and I ride the bus to work most days, and I'm trying to grow a garden of herbs this year (and hopefully some vegetables). 

So please take a moment to think about what the Earth has given to you and what you can do to give back to it.