“There is no climate emergency...” You might have trouble convincing the 235 million people in Pakistan experiencing historical flooding due to the melting snowpack in the Himalayan mountains. But let’s just set climate change aside for the moment... What do we mean when we say the word,“Environment?” My little Webster’s dictionary defin…
“There is no climate emergency...” You might have trouble convincing the 235 million people in Pakistan experiencing historical flooding due to the melting snowpack in the Himalayan mountains. But let’s just set climate change aside for the moment...
What do we mean when we say the word,“Environment?” My little Webster’s dictionary defines it as: “All the conditions surrounding and affecting the development of an organism.” Being environmentally aware is to be concerned about where, how and in what conditions we choose to spend our own lives and the lives of our children, ... and their children... The world we create will be their inheritance. What do we owe them, really?
When I was 16 we moved to a town north of Los Angeles. When I first got there we could see Anacapa Island to the West almost every day. You could count on one hand the days when the L.A. smog came around the point and blocked out the island. When I finally moved to the Rocky Mountains 8 years later, you could count the days you could SEE the Island on that same hand. That, to me, is what I call “environmental decay”...
When I moved to the Rocky Mountains some years later, we had beautiful mountains to the east and an old, inefficient coal powered steel mill in the valley floor to the west. I would climb up the mountain every chance I got, which was almost every weekend. One Spring, they closed down the mill for a year. You know what happened? The coal fed furnaces stopped pumping out smoke and the localized acid rain they created, that inevitably fell on the mountains, paused for a season. Plants and flowers that had not been seen for 40 years began to bloom. Those seeds had waited in the ground for the perfect conditions to reappear in which to grow and flourish. Hiking through the tall, colorful blossoms was like that scene in the Wizard of Oz... Incredible!...
It’s not just flowers and smog. It’s not just “global warming,” whatever that really means. It’s about caring for the world in which we live. The “world” will continue long after we drive ourselves into extinction. However the natural environment adapts to survive our thoughtless stewardship, how many species of life disappear through our selfishness, one thing stands bold and true whether or not we wish to accept it: in the grand sweep of existence WE ARE SMALL AND EXPENDABLE. Nature will go on with or without us. Caring for the environment around us, on which we depend, is simply caring for our own future survival as the organism we call Man...
“There is no climate emergency...” You might have trouble convincing the 235 million people in Pakistan experiencing historical flooding due to the melting snowpack in the Himalayan mountains. But let’s just set climate change aside for the moment...
What do we mean when we say the word,“Environment?” My little Webster’s dictionary defines it as: “All the conditions surrounding and affecting the development of an organism.” Being environmentally aware is to be concerned about where, how and in what conditions we choose to spend our own lives and the lives of our children, ... and their children... The world we create will be their inheritance. What do we owe them, really?
When I was 16 we moved to a town north of Los Angeles. When I first got there we could see Anacapa Island to the West almost every day. You could count on one hand the days when the L.A. smog came around the point and blocked out the island. When I finally moved to the Rocky Mountains 8 years later, you could count the days you could SEE the Island on that same hand. That, to me, is what I call “environmental decay”...
When I moved to the Rocky Mountains some years later, we had beautiful mountains to the east and an old, inefficient coal powered steel mill in the valley floor to the west. I would climb up the mountain every chance I got, which was almost every weekend. One Spring, they closed down the mill for a year. You know what happened? The coal fed furnaces stopped pumping out smoke and the localized acid rain they created, that inevitably fell on the mountains, paused for a season. Plants and flowers that had not been seen for 40 years began to bloom. Those seeds had waited in the ground for the perfect conditions to reappear in which to grow and flourish. Hiking through the tall, colorful blossoms was like that scene in the Wizard of Oz... Incredible!...
It’s not just flowers and smog. It’s not just “global warming,” whatever that really means. It’s about caring for the world in which we live. The “world” will continue long after we drive ourselves into extinction. However the natural environment adapts to survive our thoughtless stewardship, how many species of life disappear through our selfishness, one thing stands bold and true whether or not we wish to accept it: in the grand sweep of existence WE ARE SMALL AND EXPENDABLE. Nature will go on with or without us. Caring for the environment around us, on which we depend, is simply caring for our own future survival as the organism we call Man...