In The Environment

Warning Long Post Ahead
In honor of Earth Day I thought I would share some of my thoughts on the Earth and some of the problems we have. Before I go any further I will say I am guilty of not recycling everything that could be and I do drive my own car when I could take the bus. I do leave my cell phone charger plugged in when I’m not using it. My point of this is we could all make changes. All those little things that seem like nothing do add up sort of like when you drop your change in the collection canisters by a cash register. All those people dropping less than a dollar can add up to thousands of dollars that the charity will use for whatever charities use it for. If I unplug my charger and so does everyone on my block or in my town we would save a lot of energy, pollute less, make the air easier to breath, and maybe just maybe delay or stop global warming.
So why don’t we do everything we can? It is true we all can’t buy new hybrid cars, but we could check our tire pressure. But why don’t we? First it is just not convenient. But I think the real issue is we are not longer need to live in the environment. People use to have to grow as much as they could on their own and hunt for food just to survive. This country used to see the craftsman and the carpenters cut the trees and build the homes- now we just see the floor plan and move in when it is done. Oh sure we can spend time with trivial stuff like what carpet or paint but we don’t see the tree that becomes our house. We don’t see the animals and plants that become our dinner. We don’t see the cotton plants that become our clothes or the animal that become our shoes. Before this convenient society that we live in now only a very few people lived that way.
We have become disconnected from our planet so we don’t think, or don’t care if we damage it. In everyday life we don’t see the earth as something we depend on. We depend on the phone to be charged and the car to take us where we want to go. We depend on the gas station to have gas to make the car run. We depend on the supermarket to have food precut and packed in convenient serving sizes wrapped in plastic. I have even started to notice that food that does not need to be packaged to stay fresh, like fresh lemons in the produce section, sealed individually in plastic. (Why would anyone do that?) I think it is so sad. We have found a way to keep people alive longer and healthier but we are destroying the earth so we are going to live longer for -global warming, air pollution, over filled landfills, factory grown hormone fed meat raised in factories, chemical grown produce, water pollution.
I even think that this disconnectedness with the environment has spilled over into our way of delivering babies. I am amazed by the number of women that I meet that think that they should not need to experience any inconvenience or discomfort when delivering her child. Epidurals, scheduled caesarian sections, inductions- young women now just seem to think this is how babies should be born. Some make the entire event sound as if they were scheduling in a lunch date or some other appointment. I just think that is so scary.
Any way I think in honor of Earth day we should all take a some time to think about our environment a little bit more than we have and make a little bit better effort to unplug the cell phone charger.
It is funny but when sat down here to write this it was going to be about cloth vs. disposable diapers.