Environmentally Speaking . . .
Earth Day has long been a celebration, or maybe more aptly put, an awareness day. We don't have as many things to celebrate as perhaps we should have. A lot of folks don't even seem to notice Earth day. We don't make much of it anymore, (if we ever did). Of all the things we could be doing to help mother Earth, why is it, that we seem to draw blanks when considering the options? We don't have to make a world-wide impact to make a difference. We can start in our own backyards, or our classrooms.
It just so happens that I bought my first Earth Day book back in 1970. The first recorded blip on the eco-scale for thinking about saving our natural resources began in 1963, so you might say that I was, what you call, a late-bloomer.
The book that inspired this article is entitled, "If you want to save your environment . . ." Being the so-called, flower child that I thought I was, it seemed an absolute MUST that I have that book! I opened the book to the first page and it shouts, START AT HOME! Gee, what a concept!
Now, I'll have you know that I consider myself to be rather environmentally aware. I help out with an environmentally concerned site, http://www.fieldandforest.com and have even attended classes to become certified to teach environmental classes. I teach music, but I COULD teach about the environment, if the district I taught in offered it in the curriculum.
Nonetheless, I recently came across the book mentioned above, (can't imagine how I kept up with it since college) and I began to look through the contents once again. How many of these warnings have our country, our world, REALLY paid attention to in the past thirty years. I thought, before reading, "Probably a lot of these issues have already been dealt with, you know . . . thirty years is a long time to get a message out to the public, isn't it?
Apparently not. Read on and try not to be appalled.
Every year, (1970), Americans junk 20 million tons of paper. Wouldn't you rather have it stay trees? Trees provide beauty, oxygen, recreation, shade from the relentless heat of the sun, not to mention, helps control the overall balance of our seasons, our climate. Seem to be getting hotter where you live? Are the seasons a bit out of sync? If you are old enough, and/or aware enough, there is no question that climates are changing around the world.
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