Earth Day Moment

Happy Earth day…..does it really matter?

“What we have lived through, the 20th century, has been like a great party. Adults now have had the best time humanity has ever had. Now the party is over and the Earth is reckoning up.”
James Lovelock

Climate science maverick James Lovelock believes catastrophe is inevitable, carbon offsetting is a joke and ethical living a scam. So what would he do?

If you read James Lovelock, he predicts if you want to get some idea of what much of the Earth might look like in 50 years’ time then get hold of a powerful telescope or log onto Nasa’s Mars website. That arid, empty, lifeless landscape is, he believes, how most of Earth’s equatorial lands will be looking by 2050. A few decades later and that same uninhabitable desert will have extended into Spain, Italy, Australia and much of the southern United States. With that, comes mass migration North.

“We are on the edge of the greatest die-off humanity has ever seen,” said Lovelock. “We will be lucky if 20% of us survive what is coming. We should be scared stiff.”

"It's just too late for it," he says of going “green” and conservation "Perhaps if we'd gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don't have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing. I get an awful lot of people coming to me saying you can't say that, because it gives us nothing to do. I say on the contrary, it gives us an immense amount to do. Just not the kinds of things you want to do."

If you don’t know who James Lovelock is, he’s the high ranking scientist guru that discovered CFC’s were burning a hole in the ozone – he kind of knows what he is talking about.

So should we be scared? I suppose so, but in reality and if you think about it in a common sense way, we are not the be all and end all of civilization and the earth as we know it. There were other civilizations and life forms on this planet way before us, and there will be after us when we finally destroy it. No other life form has ruined the earth so quickly quite as we have (I’d be kind of embarrassed if I were us …oh wait I am)……We are pretty egotistical to think we are IT and we can stay the course. So why get depressed when you have come to terms that this universe is much bigger then all of us….no point stressing about it really.

Lovelock thinks that we are way too late to do anything about it and that we should enjoy life now while we can - he says this all with a smile and a shrug…what else can you do?- Regardless of what Lovelock says, and even if he says there is no point now going Green since it’s too late, I still don’t see why we can’t TRY though. It’s easy to cut things out –everyone just has to make a hard effort.

All this to say, with Earth Day upon us, a lot of people wonder how they can do their part for the environment. Thinking of our modes of transport, is crucial. A third of the emissions from Canadian households come from transportation -- the gas our vehicles burn. This is more than the total emissions of all utilities needed to power and heat our homes. Does that make sense?
Every additional car creates more traffic congestion which means more stops and starts, more idling and terrible fuel economy -- greater emissions. It also means more damage to the existing roads and creating more new roads. New roads mean destruction of farms, forests and wetlands, and increased demand for petroleum products for their construction and repair.

Let's not forget the energy needed to manufacture each car and the minerals, rubber and other components that have to be harvested from nature to make its component parts. That's a partial list of environmental considerations for operating car.

And we always forget that the oil that runs or makes our cars, also makes our clothing, delivers our food, makes our plastics, carpets, and pretty much most of the 1st world conveniences.

Our thinking has to change…because maybe, just maybe Lovelock is wrong…let’s prove him wrong. Re-use/ re-cycle as much as you can. Conserve as much as you can, and try to keep the buying to a minimum, plan your day so you only have to take the car out once to do all you need to do (if you need your car at all to do so).

Can you imagine if we all decided at once to not spend a dime on anything (other then food – and bring our own containers to buy only non packaged items) for just one month world wide? Or don’t drive any cars for 1 week……I bet we’d be shocked at what would happen.

Too bad humankind are such idiots, she says with a smile.