Gaia-Day: Big Fish, Little Fish

So today is the 35th anniversary of Earth day... Earth day is as old as I am. I was thinking about this because obviously, when you have kids, you want the world to stay at least as nice as it was when you were a kid. So what do I do to make sure of this? How do I contribute to the Earth being better or worse? I'm afraid that in some ways I'm just like most Americans and use more than I should. Although the "your environmental footprint" quiz here showed me as not using as much as most Americans by a good amount, I still use more than is sustainable. (Mostly because of my food consumption-- eating meat at most meals hogs up (ha ha) a lot of resources.)

But it's such a difficult proposition for most of us-- we think something we do (like, say, recycling) is helpful, but then you read that certain kinds of recycling are pretty much a waste (like glass recycling-- mostly it costs more to recycle glass than it does to produce new glass). And the "paper or plastic" thing-- pretty much a wash. Same with disposable vs. cloth diapers-- the energy output for cleaning/washing cloth comes up pretty high too. So what does someone with a conscience do?

So many things have changed in the last 35 years.

When I was a kid, you could play late into the night (although the rule was come home when the streetlights come on). You weren't really afraid of some psycho coming after you-- there were fears, yes, but they were largely unsubstantiated, like the boogeyman. Nowadays, people are so afraid of kooks coming and abducting their kids that I never ever see kids playing outside. And so most likely they are inside, using resources-- electricity, etc, while they play video games, eat cheetos, and don't socially interact. I remember riding my "big wheel" into the darkness, sweaty & tired from a day of playing chase with all the other kids in the complex. Everyday in the summer we were outside all day, our parents hardly knowing where we were. But we were safe then. I know I'm already worried enough about these issues that I'm considering a security system in our home... so again, more resources used.

And as for the environment, we weren't really aware of it back then. Recycling was unheard of for the most part, except in the classroom where around my second grade year (about 8?) we started discussing it. Many people actually still figured it wasn't such a bad idea to just toss something out of a moving car window. If you're old enough, you might remember the famous commercial with the Indian* crying because of all the pollution that there was on the sides of the road. According to the Straight Dope website, the commercial debuted on Earth Day, 1971.

For the better: I actually think that commercials like that had an impact-- I think that pollution on the sides of the road did go down substantially. But I'm not exactly sure if that was because people stopped throwing things out or because communities & states started paying people (or using community service) to clean up. The "Don't Mess With Texas" slogan is actually about litter, not Texans' attitude (although it has come to mean both over the years). I suspect it is the latter; I think people still throw a lot of crap out of their windows (hey, better than a messy car, right?) For the worse: But there are people who pick it up for them, and we probably spend a lot of money (as taxpayers) for that service. And it's an endless circle-- we pay our money, which we have to work to earn, and guess how most of us get to work? Driving a car which uses fossil fuels.

For the worse: Living in Texas, I am quite aware of how many people have moved to gas-guzzling big SUVs and trucks. If you drive a small high-mileage car (like mine, which gets something like 35 mpg) you're lost in a sea of giant vehicles. I think this trend is starting to change again a bit with gas prices so high-- people are tired of losing money every time they fill up their tank. But I still get a lot of people now saying "oh, now that you're going to have kids, you'll have to get a minivan/SUV cause you have so much stuff to lug around". Consumption, consumption. Stuff stuff. And I think, well, maybe. Cause it will be really hard to go shopping, with kids in two car seats, and have enough room for the junk you have to have to take babies out and still bring home the groceries. I think my car will still work for this, but maybe not.

I'm very interested in the Gaia hypothesis, which, according to Dr. Sean Chamberlin "proposes that our planet functions as a single organism that maintains conditions necessary for its survival. Formulated by James Lovelock in the mid-1960s and published in a book in 1979." The idea that the Earth is a living organism fits so well with the Goddess religions, which we all know nowadays in its watered down form of "Mother Earth." Each system affects the others, which if you think of your own life, if you're sick with a headcold, it causes other parts of your body to have trouble too. Or perhaps you have a sprained ankle-- you compensate by walking on the other ankle, right? And then that ankle gets over used, or your neck gets sore from the imbalance, or your armpits really painful from the crutches... systems are sensitive to change, and the organism does seek equilibrium. But for a while, till your ankle heals or your headcold goes away, you're out of balance, and things get worse.

Are the diseases today which we find so difficult to combat reactions to overpopulation? It sounds callous, but is it true? We see it all the time in animals-- you get too many deer, for example, and they aren't sustainable on a certain bit of land, and they start dying off. Is this true for the planet? Are humans breeding themselves into disease and death? In the US and other industrialized countries, there is an obesity issue, because we have so much food, so many resources. According to some studies, this means that because of obesity related diseases, the median age of death/lifespan, which has been going steadily up for a long time, will drop sharply again in a few years. Is it going to get worse for us? (and by us, I mean humans). Probably. Has it gotten better? Some. More people are aware of their consumption, but by all means not enough.

So Earth-day has me thinking about my own "footprint" on this planet. I don't know exactly what to do about it, but there's got to be things we can all do that really actually DO something, that aren't basically busy-work to make us THINK we're doing something (which I'm convinced most local recycling programs are). I would love to see a place where we use fuel sources that actually improve the environment rather than deplete it. I'd love to see a world where more of us walk to the places we're going-- which is hard in the 'burbs, but maybe do-able if we try.

Are there things you have done, that you do, to try to reduce the negative impact your existence has on the planet? Or have you never really thought about it? After our baby shower a couple weeks ago, when we had a TON of garbage waiting by the curb, it was pretty clear we can generate an awful lot of waste. So what do we do about it? I'm certainly open to suggestions. I'd like it if when my kids are 35, they don't have to worry about it getting worse for their kids.

But I don't have a clue how I can actually do this. It seems like something that bigger fish than me have to attack. And how do we little fish get that to happen?

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*(Interestingly, the actor who played the "Indian" was actually an Italian-American, and the tear was fake. The Ad Council website still claims Cody was an Indian and he even has a star on the walk of fame. Isn't that just what you'd figure?)