A big, big river. The longest in the world.
If the Nile River were stretched across the United States, it would run jus about from New York City to Los Angeles.
That’s perspective.
Perspective. A point of view. A vantage point.
How we see things.
The Exxon Valdez spill filled the news, among other things. A terribly big mess.
Yet.
Every year, 16 million gallons of oil run off the pavement into streams, rivers, and eventually, oceans in the United States alone. This is more oil than was spilled by the Exxon Valdez during the accident.
Perspective.
Right now, there are over 3.04 trillion trees in the world. However, 27,000 of them are cut down daily to make toilet paper. Right in the crapper. This translates to about 9.8 million trees annually. But our butts need them.
The majority of trees in American forests have been cut down for building and fuel. As a result, only less than 4% of American forests remain today. Instead, we have concrete, glass, and steel.
As Joni Mitchell once said, “They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.”
The bigger view.
We Americans produce 30% of the world’s waste even though we have only 5% of the world’s population.
We consume. Humans consume by nature. But now we take home our shopping items in those little plastic bags.
A great deal of plastic bags and other plastic garbage ends up in the ocean and kills over 1,000,000 sea animals every year.
It’s all how you look at things.
A large group of people in the United States doesn’t care. If it isn’t on FOX News, it must not be true.
And they only report the things that will help the ultra-rich get richer. Follow the money.
The other people in the United States, who do care, often don’t know what to do. We contribute in small portions by helping where we can, but it isn’t putting much of a dent into things.
We’re wrecking the planet. And, that took some effort.
The planet Earth is about one million years old. Right now, it has over one million species going extinct, mainly due to human activities. Thousands more species are on the verge of extinction.
Extinction means that a particular thing ceases to exist. All of that thing. Period.
Too little, too late.
Of course, preaching to the choir doesn’t have much effect outside of the choir box.
So, the singers keep on singing.
And, the sinners keep on sinning.
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“The Earth is what we all have in common.”
— Wendell Berry
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“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
— George Bernard Shaw
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“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of a difference you want to make.”
— Jane Goodall
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Singing to you, and you, and the sinners, too.
