Our World and Everything in It

I just loved this one. Not long ago I wrote a blog that showed the percentage of money all top 5 oil companies contribute to alternative energy for the world’s future, and there was Exxon Mobil with a big fat zero, and an impudent attitude that they are in the oil business period. Well, Exxon Mobil sprouted from Standard Oil, you know Rockefeller Standard Oil. And that family has a very different take on environmental issues.

This I know personally. My husband and I visited the Rockefeller mansion and estate in Sleepy Hollow, New York not 2 years ago. And yes, it was Halloween season, and it is the real Sleepy Hollow on the edge of the Hudson. Lovely little town by the way. Anyway, the Rockefeller’s were environmentalists way before that word became common. If I recall right, they actually bought the land across the Hudson River, in Orangeburg County, just so the cliffs and hills on the other side didn’t get all built up because it was in their view and they didn’t want the panorama destroyed. It’s still not build up from what I can see. These people did not live as extravagantly as we would think and were not prone to buying bigger, better, or newer on a whim. They considered the environment in their plans.

The estate is like a botanical garden that was restored from a wasted rolling hillside over-grazed by sheep owned by Dutch settlers. The Rockefellers brought in all types of flora and fauna and turned this place into a little Eden. If you ever go to Sleep Hollow visit this estate, and many other very interesting and historical spots nearby. Of course going at Halloween time is exceptional. Make it across the Tappanzee bridge to Orangeburg and some really quaint little villages near water’s edge. The country’s second largest mall is over there too—sorry—I digress.

So as environmentalists, the Rockefellers, whose family still owns a good portion of what is now Exxon stock and as the article on MSN states, “like to consider themselves the longest continuing shareholders,” went public with their complaint to Exxon Mobil. The family wants Exxon to buy into the future of alternative energy. Don’t you just love it?

The article went on to say that “Peter O’Neill, who heads the Rockefeller Family committee dealing with Exxon Mobil and is the great-great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller” thinks Exxon is fighting the last war and not seeing the new war ahead. O’Neill also stated that he had the support of 80 percent of family members. That’s a lot of clout. Remember my blog that the hypothetical “Chicken Littles” are getting bigger and with more clout? Well this family is pretty mighty. Exxon Mobil was formed by the combination of two offspring of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust. It is now the world’s largest publicly traded oil company. The family doesn’t quite know how much of the company they still own collectively.

The best part is that the Rockefellers are eyeballing Exxon’s leadership. The article stated: “Members of the family said they have sponsored four proxy resolutions this year that raised concerns about the company’s leadership under Chairman and Chief Executive Rex Tillerson. They also said they have spent years behind the scenes prodding the company to change its approach to the oil business.” And now they’ve gone public”because they believe future energy will come from sources other than oil and natural gas, and say the company needs to move more quickly into sustainable technology to secure its long-term viability.”

Do ya think? It’s called foresight, something that is curiously lacking in some of today’s biggest industries that I’ve been complaining about for a while now. Small businesses can’t afford to ignore trends, sustainability, or the competition, why should the big guys? Ditto for utilities that keep pushing for fossil fuel, then last minute can’t afford quick changes and pass costs on to us! Logic dictates a portion of net gains should be invested in the newest energy trend with more and more invested as that trend takes hold, and while the other side of the investment in fossil fuels winds down, eventually switching over completely to alternative energy to continue the wealth. It looks like greed got in the way here, and the Rockefellers don’t like it. I’d be a little worried about my attitude if I were Rex.

Read the whole story:
Read the whole story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24387781/wid/18298287/

The BBC reported tonight that there is a worldwide food shortage. Over 100 million people will go hungry this year. Problems from a rise in food prices have crossed every border in the world, even causing riots in some countries.

This is the cost of not acting on earlier warnings. Now $1.7 billion is needed to assist farmers worldwide. The crisis is being blamed on:

· Climate change
· Population growth
· Higher demand by growing Asian markets
· Use of land to bio-fuels
· Rise in oil prices

It’s interesting because the BBC also said that many countries are rethinking bio-fuel, especially corn-based ethanol. Science has made it well known that we cannot produce enough ethanol to replace the gas we use. The land mass just isn’t there. But while other countries push away from bio-fuel, president Bush pushes it forward saying that a good way to new renewable energy is the ability to grow it. Someone needs to tell him that it’s already been figured out that route is impossible.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7372393.stm.

While I was on the NASA website I couldn’t help but click on ” Forests Damaged by Hurricane Katrina Become Major Carbon Source.” That article stated that, “a research team has estimated that Hurricane Katrina killed or severely damaged 320 million large trees in Gulf Coast forests, which weakened the role the forests play in storing carbon from the atmosphere. The damage has led to these forests releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.” The satellite pics in the article show the devastation from Katrina. It was quite a wipe out.

The NASA article also stated that “[t]he carbon cycle is intimately linked to just about everything we do, from energy use to food and timber production and consumption. [] As more and more carbon is released to the atmosphere by human activities, the climate warms, triggering an intensification of the global water cycle that produces more powerful storms, leading to destruction of more trees, which then act to amplify climate warming.”

So one event, like a massive hurricane, results in deforestation and decay that cause more CO2 to be released, and more overall warming for more massive hurricanes. Destructive cycle seemed to be formed rather easily. Not good for us.

Read more and check out the web short “In Katrina’s Wake” @ http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2007/katrina_carbon.html.

I just came to the realization this morning that I’m a geek. I doubt anyone but those extremely close to me would ever consider me a geek, because I didn’t. But I’m writing a fiction book that deals with space and as part of the research; I clicked on the NASA channel this morning. Oh, I’ve visited this channel before but it never occurred to me how long I linger there. I actually sit mesmerized by this world of space, science, and math that face it; most of our population knows absolutely nothing about and could care less.

My interest in the NASA channel isn’t the only thing however that qualifies me as a geek. Lately, I’ve become more and more interested in alternative sources of energy, particularly the many experiments with hydrogen. And I actually liked advanced math in college. Huge algebra problems were like puzzles to be worked, and I fanatically worked them. I even took an electricity class at Community College for the fun of it. Now something is clearly wrong here when only five people signed up for the class and after the instructor outlined what everyone would be doing, including algebra, the final class tally turned out to be me and another guy who had to take it. I’m a geek aren’t I?

That’s probably why I was anxious to read the pdf files of the latest findings that were reported from NASA today via telecon by a panel of experts ranging from terrestrial ecology to atmospheric and oceanic sciences relative to:

Changes to Earth’s ecosystems [that] are evident in recent research that employs NASA remote-sensing data. Panelists [discussed] several topics, including the impact of shrinking Arctic sea ice on marine ecosystems, how invasive species alter the biochemistry of local ecosystems, the role of climate change on the length of growing seasons and ecosystems, and seasonal changes in phytoplankton and the consequences on marine ecosystems.

It’s amazing what is seen from satellite devices, and how these global views allow scientists to analyze a situation. As these views are recorded over time changes become evident. Linking all the info from different components of the global warming equation like Arctic ice melt, rainforest changes, results of deforestation and fires, and marine biology is what has been necessary since the whole global warming theory began. Gathering data like that from all types of sources, and then combining it in a productive way to see how one system affects another over the globe is a daunting task, but satellite technology looks to tackle all of that in the future.

Check out the sight and the pdf files of different topics discussed.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/ecosystem_research_briefs.html.

Click on News and Features on that page also to get the latest from NASA about polar bears and loss of habitat:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/polar_bears.html

From my e-mail, I read that Earthjustice attorneys filed a case to stop the wolf slaughter in the northern Rockies. A coalition of environmental and animal rights groups like the NRDC, the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Humane Society urged Earthjustice to use its legal expertise to stop the killing immediately and “compel the federal government to reinstate Endangered Species Act protections for wolves until true recovery is achieved.

This didn’t come out of the blue. Earthjustice filed intent to challenge the decision to take wolves off the endangered list, but the USFWS didn’t answer. So now they go to court because as Earthjustice charges: “The USFWS failed to take into account basic principles of conservation biology, disregarded its own policies, and departed from past practice in delisting the wolf.” And Earthjustice will argue in court that the USFWS

used an outdated and biologically inadequate standard for determining the number of wolves that must be protected in order to maintain a genetically viable population;

ignored the agency’s own requirement that wolves in the northern Rockies’ core recovery populations must be connected and interbreed before they can be deemed recovered; and

failed to take into account that state laws that currently govern the fate of the wolves in the absence of federal protections allow unregulated wolf killing.

What angers me most about this is the time and expense that goes into something like this that shouldn’t have happened in the first place in the U.S. of America. You know from my postings that petitions with signatures in the thousands hit the USFWS before the delisting, as well as, thousands of phone calls. Washington went ahead anyway, a total disregard for their responsibility to us—again. And none of this will bring Limpy or the other 19 wolves back.

I read Mitch Albom’s column in the Free Press this past Sunday, and although I agree with him, I think it was well, um, a little bit dated. His perception that environmentalists are a league of people still derided as Chicken Littles is a little off. As long as I’ve been writing this blog, I think maybe I’ve been called a Chicken Little twice. I had one opponent that appeared to be a drinker going off into raves eventually calling me a cur so as to not get axed from the website for calling me something worse. But that was long ago. Another opponent eventually came to terms with the fact that on a lot of levels we are simpatico. We agreed that we do indeed create trash and should be cleaning up after ourselves, whether or not it does or does not contribute to global warming. Isn’t this moment of agreement in the environmental argument all that’s needed? Because cleaning up after ourselves is the first step to realizing just how much garbage we actually create, which should logically lead to more conservation efforts regardless of global warming.

In this light, how the pro-environmental argument is presented seems to make a heck of a lot of difference. Finding common ground brings people to agreement faster, and that’s what seems to be happening. Unlike Albom, I’m seeing a huge surge of environmentalism on TV and the Internet lately. My 85-year old mother pointed it out to me about 2 weeks ago. I paid closer attention after that and she’s right. There are all types of commercials on TV that are telling people to buy in bulk, don’t shampoo their hair every day, you know insidious mantra that eventually gets an entire population moving toward conservation without knowing it. Admit it. We’re herded more times than not and industry with the help of the media is like the rancher.

I blogged about industry moving the green market quite a while back. Industry’s push to go “green” is getting increasingly stronger because they can’t afford high energy costs either. GE can hardly keep up with the demand for its industrial wind turbines. Green rooftops are appearing on city buildings everywhere thanks to newly formed environmental organizations like Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. And just look up companies growing in leaps and bounds like Sun Edison, who provides an affordable way for industry to benefit from rooftop solar panels, that is, if they aren’t already planted green. Retail giant Wal-Mart starting moving to go green, and now companies like SC Johnson are looking to supply those big stores with their “totally” green .products. Even Conoco Philips (Big Oil) threw in the towel, and joined Tyson Chicken to create biofuel from chicken fat at no real profit, just because it’s the right thing to do for the environment. And when moguls like Ted Turner make statements that it’s absolute suicide to continue to pollute and consume the way we do, well, try calling terrible Ted a “CL.”

I’ve lost count of all the home improvement shows that tout “green,” as well as, media outlets like PBS, Discovery, Science, and National Geographic channels that consistently show the latest findings and discoveries regarding the environment and man. I’ve even watched Canadian TV like “The Outsider,” or “The Fifth Estate” air documentaries about U.S. government cover ups of scientific reports relative to global warming. I’m seeing more and more green shows coming out of Canada now. And I can’t say enough for organizations listed as links on my blog like EarthJustice, The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, Union of Concerned Scientists, and many others that don’t think twice to take on the U.S. Government or anyone else over the environment and wildlife. While we sleep, or go about our usual day, these guys are out on cold oceans, at the edge of public forests, in congress, and everywhere they need to be to stop bad things from happening to our world and everything in it.

But best of all when I see Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich in a commercial urging citizens to contact congress to push ahead to embrace environmentalism, it’s a clear indication that forces are looking to gather against the old energy lobbyists and the spin machine. This was topped off last week when Henry Waxman, Chairman of the Committee for Oversight and Reform, sent a letter to EPA Administrator Johnson, that he need be prepared to testify regarding the recently released Union of Concerned Scientists Report documenting extensive and widespread political interference with the work of scientists at EPA. Yes!!!

Add to that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the EPA should be regulating CO2 emissions from autos as part of the Clean Air Act, and the U.S. Court of Appeals vacating the EPA’s “Clean Air Mercury Rule,” literally throwing out the EPA’s cap and trade system for mercury, and demanding the EPA set new standards for the coal burning industry within two years. Concurrently, it also vacated the EPA’s “Incinerator Rule.” This bodes exceptionally well for the Chicken Little movement.

The timing is uncanny, but unlike Mr. Albom’s perception of environmental efforts, this past Sunday, for the first time in a very long time, I was optimistic about environmentalism, my faith in America restored. After researching the onslaught against our parks, our air, our water, animals, and their habitat for so long by the Bush/Cheney administration, I finally sensed a real, hardy shove back by the other powers that be, which is American industry and ingenuity. They don’t seem to suffer low self-esteem as a “Chicken Little” crowd at all. Had Mitch written about the “CL” complex a year ago I might have wholeheartedly agreed. But now, all I see is the “greening” of America, like it or not. As for “Chicken Little” calling, sticks and stones…

I’ve already blogged that Idaho and Wyoming’s own state statistics show elk and deer populations are far over the limit for their species. The proper scientific limit for wolves to be secure from extinction should be near 3000, yet the number 1500 seems to be the norm for these states to begin to eradicate wolves because they pose a threat to deer and elk populations???

The hunt has already begun. Defenders of Wildlife states: “Locals have organized weekend eradication “wolf hunts” to kill any wolf that they find. One group tracked a wolf for 35 miles on snowmobiles before shooting it dead.” Now that’s real sporting. You know we’ve had a war going on for how long, isn’t that enough blood thirst for most Americans, or has it heightened the sense of the kill for some so much that they can’t turn it off? On the other hand, has it desensitized us to pain, suffering, and death that we just bury our heads anymore? To look forward to killing animals that are clearly being eradicated for no viable reason except for the sport is an indication of a nation’s decline in my book.

But the biggest testament to a nation’s decline is knowing full well we’re being lied to about many, many things, and doing nothing about it, even something that could be championed like this wolf slaughter issue. A study by the Dept. of Agriculture proved wolves are not attacking cattle in huge numbers either. And this N.Y. Times article just 2 years ago shows how badly the wolf populations were suffering from the parvo disease. It shows a pack of new wolf cubs that died shortly after the picture was taken. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/national/15wolf.html So in 2006, the gray wolf population declined from disease, yet two years later wolves are out of control?  What a pack of lies, and the liars head up departments in our U.S. government.

A lot of people think no big deal. But it was a big deal when the first gray wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone not very long ago. The rangers there have good things to say about the balance the wolves restored to the forest. As part of this reintroduction and study, many wolves are numbered, their packs have names, and some of the wolves have been viewed so much they gained notoriety and names, like Limpy, number 253M. Defenders says: “Limpy was many things to many people – to wolf-watchers, he was the hobbling member of Yellowstone’s famous Druid Peak Pack. To Utahans, he was the first wolf to be seen in the state for more than 70 years.”

For wolf novices the Druid Peak Pack was the second pack introduced to Yellowstone from Canada, and one of the most observed. Check out one girls sighting at her visit to Yellowstone and her video of the Druid pack on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNeFetdSHrQ. We’re talking tourism and educational fodder here.

I don’t know if the girl saw Limpy with hind legs that were crippled in a fight. No matter now, Limpy was shot dead in Wyoming on elk feeding grounds the first day wolves were taken off the endangered list. Remember elk numbers are beyond where they should be in these states. The wolves were out doing their job. Limpy obviously wasn’t speedy enough as a cripple. Two other wolves were shot with him.

So what we have here is the beginning of a slaughter perpetrated by lies from U.S. officials to practically eradicate a species that have only reached half their peak. Meanwhile, people have posted pictures on You Tube and commented on their trips to Yellowstone and the opportunity to see the notorious wolves.

You know what this reminds me of? Natives in Africa, deprived of an education, with very little means of sustenance for survival that kill endangered species in order to take the habitat over for farming, as well as, eat the bushmeat. Once the natives are taught that protecting the animals brings tourism to the area to view the animals, and all types of new income opportunity is opened to them, they embrace it wholeheartedly and the animals begin to flourish under the native’s good stewardship.

What’s the excuse for the states of Idaho, and Wyoming? They are neither stupid nor starving, but appear to be shooting themselves in the foot relative to tourism by killing the wolves, or there are ulterior motives worth a heck of a lot more money. It can’t be the hunting industry. It will only flourish from wolf hunts for so long. A few hunting seasons and the wolves will be gone, and then what’s to shoot? Oh yeah, all those excessive deer and elk populations.

My best guess for ulterior motives still lies with Bush’s plan to reverse the Roadless Rule, where Idaho might find themselves stripped of a heck of a lot more than the wolf population. If that happens, the second largest forest in America will slowly disappear from mining, drilling, and logging. Wolf hunters could face eminent domain issues in the future and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.

Click on Defenders at the right to sign a petition to stop this senseless slaughter.

As for Limpy, he’s famous.  Just search “Limpy the Wolf” on the internet. There are pages of urls for him.

I couldn’t post a blog last night because I lost my dial tone again. It just came back on so I’m getting this out there as fast as I can. I couldn’t research what I wanted to blog about and maybe that’s a good thing because I caught an absolutely fantastic show on WGTE, Toledo Public TV last night as part of their Strange Days on Planet Earth series. Ed Norton narrated current findings relative to global warming that are directly tied to of all things fish and mankind. Like he said no one would ever consider fish as heroes of the global warming battle but after last night’s presentation the realization of how man is so intimately connected to everything on earth, that every little thing we do, every little thing we eat like a sardine, affects us and sometimes in very bad ways that only adds to global warming and loss of more food.

What was showcased is the latest correlation between man and global warming concerns fish. Did you know that Namibia besides being the birthplace of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s baby is also home to one of the world’s richest fisheries? At least Namibia was rich with fish 40 years ago, where millions of tons of fish were processed per year and sold worldwide.
 
Namibia is one of the most productive ocean systems in the world because it enjoys almost constant ocean winds, which churn up nutrients like plankton from the bottom. Sardines love plankton and swarmed the area in the millions. But man over fished the sardines years ago and although Namibia has made a concentrated effort to recover their fish populations, it’s just not happening. Fleets of fishing boats from Europe and other far away places invaded that space and harvested, and harvested, ten million sardines in one month’s time sometimes, without enforced regulations to stifle the pillaging.

So what about sardines you say? As part of another delicate ecosystem that has been disrupted by mankind, the sardine is necessary to insure the plankton does not build up on the ocean floor. Rotting plankton has a very detrimental effect.  Hydrogen sulfide and methane production is the by-product of rotting plankton. Sulfur is that rotten egg smelling gas.

As a result of over fishing sardines, Namibia’s coastline now boasts a strange shift in ocean color on a regular basis. Some call it lemonade, or a whitish ethereal color appears while the horrible stench of rotten eggs is emitted, and then unimaginable amounts of dead fish float up and line the shoreline. With all the over-fishing in our oceans today, we do not need this additional kill off of fish. It’s creating a cycle where we’re going to end up with no fish at all.

Three people figured out what’s happening in Namibia. A marine biologist, Brownen Currie, a satellite expert Scarla Weeks, and an oceanographer Andrew Bakun figured out that deep-sea eruptions were taking place and emitting hydrogen sulfide. Bakun found that deep sea eruptions coincided with desert rain, that atmospheric storms that pass over the ocean’s surface cause pressure on top that translates to pressure at the bottom where the buildup of hydrogen sulfide and methane lay. Eruptions on the ocean floor take place releasing millions of bubbles of the two gases. As methane rises to the surface it expands and becomes explosive.

Experts have known about these eruptions for a while and figured they were isolated incidents, but when Scarla Weeks, a satellite expert became involved a whole other scenario surfaced. From satellite images in space these eruptions were shown to be increasingly more virulent, and are occurring back to back, growing out of control into huge events covering hundreds of kilometers over the ocean.

This is where my eyes bugged out. I wrote a blog about a CO2 explosion at the bottom of a lake in Africa, which resulted in a cloud of gas belching into the night and traveling miles to kill 1700 people. At first, it was thought to be a methane gas explosion like those happening off of Namibia. Then I remembered writing a blog about the first global warming event some 40 million years ago that incinerated the earth. It was caused by a ½ degree in temperature change over a longer period of time than we’re experiencing now. It happened because of constant methane eruptions on the ocean floor from an earth that was still forming.  The atmosphere eventually filled with methane, which is twenty six times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, and the earth fried.

Scientists have always thought that it was impossible for methane or carbon dioxide to build up like that again on the ocean floor due to the constant movement of water. Wrong again. It seems like what we’re facing now is totally new territory. But there are still quite a few obstinate people who will not see that humans are affecting the earth in a myriad of ways that is upsetting the intricate balance of all living things. This is just one of the ways we’ve impacted the earth and helped global warming along. I remember someone I talked to about environmental events brushing off the idea that an increase in earthquakes is tied to global warming. Why not? Now that we know atmospheric pressure on the surface of seawater affects pressure at the bottom of the sea, it’s quite possible that atmospheric pressure can affect pressure below the earth’s surface just as easily, and there are a lot more earthquakes happening lately.

The idea of eating fish because it is healthy for us is starting to resemble the idea of drinking bottled water. We do it for our own health but do not realize the affects of those actions, that it hurts the earth to toss that plastic in a trash dump or along the roadside, every bit as much as over harvesting even the smallest fish. Without strict fishing regulations, new ways of farming fish, (more about that mess in another blog), and a quick attitude change by the human population to conserve, it doesn’t appear there will be enough in the wild to sustain mankind worldwide. 

Read more about methane explosions and Namibia at: http://www.pbs.org/strangedays/episodes/dangerouscatch/experts/stench.html.

Sounds like Happy Birthday doesn’t it? We’re lucky to live in the hemisphere where spring and Earth Day coincide because we can see how Mother Nature celebrates as if it were her birthday. I’m looking at flowers blooming, all types of birds, even some Chickadees, making nests, and the arrival of assorted ducks, geese, even some stray white geese walking on the bank of the canal. It’s always a surprise what comes over the berm in the spring.  I saw a row of turtles lined up on a floating tree trunk in the canal yesterday, and the Forsythia and Magnolia trees are in bloom so it’s time to uncover the rose bushes.

I don’t care DSL is not yet available to me because I live in this beautiful spot, the farthest NE corner of Monroe County Michigan. The trade offs are priceless because all I describe is what I see in my yard, most of it out of the patio windows right now as I write.  One of my Blue Jays is sitting on my deck railing about 8 ft. away. He deliberately stares in and looks down repeatedly at me and the deck floor as if to say: “Where are the peanuts?” It forces me to pause here…to give him some.

The pause was actually longer than expected because I caught a glimpse of a blackbird eating something in the lawn with legs shimmering pink in the morning sun. I thought it might be a baby bird and yelled: “Hey,” which of course chased all the birds away. I was kind of afraid at what I’d find, but you know human nature will get just about anyone curious enough to go look.

It was a big fat crawdad. It reminded me of a couple of cats I had that would crawdad hunt. They’d arrive at the door with only one front leg covered with mud. I’d find empty shells around the yard. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could hunt up our own shrimp cocktail when we wanted? Ah, the bounty of Mother Earth.

That’s about all I have to say this beautiful, glorious April 22, 2008, Earth Day as the sun shines on our little area. Nothing I could say about our world and everything in it can compete with the sheer joy of experiencing the tiniest bit of it. The smallest thing like the way the morning sun hits the dew on the grass creating hundreds of little diamond sparkles on green is a joy. Heck after winter in Michigan, the warm air is a joy. The view and the weather just make me smile and look up—Thanks.

Revel in Earth this day. Notice what the environment sustains beside ourselves and consider that the health of that environment depends on us. In that sense, we are our own destiny.

There were many events going on in communities this weekend in honor of Earth Day. Monroe celebrated in St. Mary’s Park, Grosse Ile had events, the Toledo Zoo had Earth Day celebrations and there was the 16th Annual Lake Shore Cleanup at Lake Erie Metro Park this weekend. And do we need a clean-up.

Has anyone else noticed more roadside litter? I pass by other property of mine on my daily walks so I notice the garbage I need to get out of the ditches. It’s no longer beer or liquor bottles strewn about but empty plastic bottles of Vitamin water, Aquafina, Sunny D, and one of those flavored waters.

The discards are representative of health conscious human consumption. The fact that these human litterbugs care about their personal health but not the earth’s health is ironic. Taking care of ourselves is futile if we do not take care of the environment that sustains us. It’s a matter of math for Pete’s sake.
I see human populations growing, and pollution growing exponentially along with it. And the pollution is stuff that just doesn’t decompose like plastic.
 
An example of old plastic: This weekend I was fluffing rocks. I have river rock in my landscape and tossing them aside and putting the dirt back under the weed barrier refurbishes the rock. I end up with buckets of river rock that were sinking into the ground, which I put back on top of the mound. Lot’s of work but it’s therapeutic too. 

Well I’ve been lax. I haven’t tossed rocks for about 5 years. I found the plastic weed barrier had sunk about 8 inches down into the ground. Years ago perforated plastic was used as a barrier. It was still there after 17 years and sinking. All I could think is what if layers of plastic built up? Would it eventually solidify into one humongous block of plastic? Nothing could be dug where it existed until it sunk deep enough, and would this block keep traveling downward into the earth? What kind of sticky goo would it become as it heats?
Scary thought, an earth filled with pockets of digested, melted plastic.

One of the simplest things we can do for the earth is not litter, and recycle whenever we can. We’re slowly learning to take care of ourselves with the food and drink choices we make. To throw the plastic litter from these healthy choices onto the ground is an unconscious act we need to break. Once we begin to associate the idea of health and maintenance to our world and everything in it not just ourselves, I believe things will begin to improve greatly. Besides, it is almost impossible to be healthy while living in an unhealthy environment.