Inadvertently, I found myself involved with the first Earth Day in 1971. I didn’t understand what it was completely about, perhaps I was doing too many drugs that year, but I helped Mr. Robert Matheny pull it all together.
Today some still deny that our climate is changing even as the forests and ice caps shrink, even as some species near extinction. Others still believe that we have done nothing to cause this as the earth has gone through periods of ice and heat before.
I believe we are the cause as I watch the seas rise and the weather patterns change.
I truly believed when I read that one man had sailed the Northwest Passage Alone. For the first time, the Northwest Passage was free from ice two years in a row, and Tommy Cook sailed that route in 2010. Others have done this before. His site tells us, “From 1903 to 1906, Roald Amundsen led the first expedition to successfully pass to the Pacific from the Atlantic via the Northwest Passage. In 1977, Willy de Roos became the first person to sail the Northwest Passage solo in a 41 foot steel ketch.”
As The Geezer worked in the Automotive Museum as a docent yesterday, Lessa and Zoe with gramma in tow went to the Museum of Man. We found the park filled with white tents all scattered about like confetti in preparation for Earth Day 2012. I’m not going to be there in the sunshine today, but I believe. I’ve changed my lifestyle because I believe.
The museum is closed today. Earth Day celebrations are total hell on the staff and the building. We simply close rather than deal with it. *sigh*
ReplyDeleteGlobal warming captures the discussion because it is big. All the "little" changes, species disappearing because of habitat loss,water filled with all kinds of toxins because of our pollution, and, of course, our ever growing population for which contraception is a sin are the dangers that are going to get us, or more accurately that little girl in your post just as well.
ReplyDeleteOh, I believe! Ever since I realized that, if the waters get too warm, they won't absorb the carbon dioxide in the air, which we produce in ever-rising amounts. I don't even know how close we are to the point of no return.
ReplyDeleteJust a day or so ago, I heard an interview on NPR with one of the guys who was a private citizen astronaut. He talked about seeing the burning of the Amazon from space. This burning/clearing for agriculture, housing and timber use has to affect the world. Even if you don't believe in anything else, the destruction of something as large as the Amazon has to hit you.
ReplyDeleteI hope your Zoe's generation is better at all of this than we have been. We may have started Earth Day, but we have been lousy at saving the Earth.
Don't get me wrong; I believe we are creating global warming. The thing I don't understand is there are so many benefits for behaving as if we are creating global warming: cleaning up our environment, importing less fossil fuel, etc; why do we continue to argue over this. Sometimes I think the whole world is going crazy.
ReplyDeleteZoe looks like she had a very good day. Like you, I believe.
ReplyDeleteI think you would have to have your head buried in the sand to not believe.
ReplyDeleteI participated in the first Earth Day here in Washington DC on the Mall. Much has changed for the good and the bad since then.
ReplyDeleteThe Climate is changing, but the jury is still out on how much is owing to human activity and how much to climatic cycles or sun spots.
As for ice caps shrinking, at one time the entire Earth was a tropical swamp. At another time we had more than one ice age.
Species going extinct, always was, always will be.
I am with Ruth. It doesn't matter if we are causing Global Warming or not, we can clean up our act, and many of have been doing just that.
We must find and use alternative forms of energy. Can't leave people out in the cold. Natural Gas and Atomic plants are the future. Solar panels are fine, but not good enough. Nor is wind enough.
I have been studying this topic for a long time, and am as far into it as you are into NAZI architecture. Take it easy. More things to worry about than living ODAT?? Dianne
My thumb is up to you and all your other readers who believe and choose to live by that belief. It gives me hope enough will be convinced so we don't ruin everything for our kids and their kids. We're doing what we can too, but I still worry a little about the big bad footprint I leave by traveling globally the way we always hoped. I'm not quite read to change everything.
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