earth day 2014

Following up on my last post...thank you all for the wonderful comments assuring me that the universe is not that mean. I don't really believe that my little bit of magical wishing was the cause of my fall. Or even the cause of the guy backing out of his contract even though I do believe that thought is energy and the more energy put into an idea the more likely it will become manifest. But I also don't believe in coincidence all that much either though that doesn't mean the two things are connected, but you have to admit it made a good little story.

Also, there are definitely baby wrens in the bird house. The parents have been calling loudly and flying back and forth with little tidbits in their beaks.

So, today is Earth Day, the day we think about, focus on, this beautiful blue marble spinning through space. Of course, every day should be Earth Day because we are not, on the whole, doing much to preserve it. Climate change is upon us most likely propelled by human activity.

It's getting extreme folks. Bigger fiercer storms, hotter dryer summers, colder wetter and prolonged winters. We poison the water, we poison the ground, we poison the air. We poison our food. We frack, crack, the very bones of the planet to extract it's marrow. The oceans are filled with trash. The oceans! In all those weeks of trying to find that missing plane, what they found instead were masses and masses of trash.

photo by Zak Noyle

My heart bleeds.

Now they want to geoengineer the atmosphere by releasing toxic metal oxides like aluminum into the stratosphere, if they aren't already, in an effort to combat climate change.

God forbid we should just alter our behavior. But we won't. We won't because human beings have the ability to adapt. While we are destroying a vibrant diverse ecosystem (we are currently in the middle of one of earth's great extinctions fueled by human activity) we are, at the same time, adapting to it as this new scenario of Easter Island suggests.

What a sad diminished future we face.

But change is still possible if we will just give up this notion that whatever we want is good, that we can do away with whatever bothers us to no ill effect.

The simple re-introduction of wolves into Yellowstone Park, for instance, completely changed a degraded and denuded ecosystem in just a few years into one that was healthy and thriving.

While most of us don't have the power to make big changes, we do have the power to make changes in our personal environment.

Refuse, reuse, repair, recycle.

Don't use poisons...herbicides and pesticides also kill the good things.

Grow a garden and support organic farmers.

Plant flowers, especially milkweed, for our butterflies and bees.

Don't kill something just because you can because that creature has an important job.

Provide a water source for birds.

Keep a bit of wild space if you can.

Go green.