Happy Earth Day!
3 TODOs FOR THINKING PEOPLE
Well it's that time of year again. That special day when all 8 BILLION of us humans on Earth get to consider our past, current day, and most probable future. I remember being confused in the 1970's about "why" we were supposed to be celebrating the earth.
IMAGINE, I was born was born in 1960 and there were only THREE (3) BILLION people at that time.
In my mostly white, rural, poor, uneducated, god-fearing, hillbilly community outside of Asheville NC, nobody I knew was capable of thinking that the world's population was going to TRIPLE during my generation.
Since its' incipience in 1970, Earth Day to my way of thinking is not a happy celebration ... it's a 3 damn bell emergency wake up alarm that we better get our sh!t together as a species!!!
PLEASE NOTE: As a CO-OP student making $8/hour at NC State's computer science department, I worked for the EPA-NOAA and co-published an article entitled, "A Sensitivity Analysis of the Treatment of Area Sources by the Climatological Dispersion Model." Point being ... I've been hugging trees for a long time ... just saying.
3 TODOS (asap if you don't mind)
If you are still reading this post and accept the reality that this rock we call home will soon house about 9 billion people, here are 3 TODOs our big old loveable human family had better get to work on! "Momma, Please pass the chicken ..."
AGREE TO AGREE
Enough of this polarized, fringe, loud mouth, nobody is ever-gonna-win yelling at each other. Stop it. We gotta agree to agree if we are going to share Earth.
Let's agree ... inside the earth's atmosphere, all 8 billion of us must have clean air, water, and land to survive. Without it ... #revelations ... it's over. We must agree that the goal of having clean air, clean water, and clean land is a top priority for our children and their children?!
EQUAL MEANS EQUAL
There must be some basic shared global belief for equality and human rights. In USA for god's sake, it's part of the US Constitution that all people should have "equal protection of the the laws."
The reason this is key to Earth Day is that we can't agree to let China, Mexico, Canton, NC or anywhere create a nasty cesspool of environmental pollution while Norway and Denver stay beautiful. I gotta rant ... but we can't "hide" the pollution under a rock. Ask the folks around Cudjo Key.
REDUCE, REUSE, REPURPOSE
Do those 3R's and then (and only then), please recycle when you can and it makes sense to do so. To put a fine tip on this point, we have to dramatically SLOW consumption. For those of you who have attended a high school algebra class (I know ... why do you have to learn things you'll never use in real life?), the X is # of people and the Y is amount of stuff each person consumes (thus pollutes). If we know that the population is going to grow, the only variable we can collectively control is Y. Buy a single YETI and use it for coffee, sweet tea, ice cream, beer, jack & coke, and taking communion.
GranLloyd lived to 102. Imagine is he only used ONE yet for all the beverages he consumed during his lifetime. In all fairness, he did have only one brass spitter.
Bottom line is this: we all must find a way to agree that all humans should have clean air, water, and land to live on Earth together.
So instead of "Happy" Earth Day, let's go with "Holy Crap We Better Make Some Changes ASAP" Earth Day. #My2Cents are listed above. Let's start there ... together?
Photo Cred/Editing: @KelliDarlin
Here's today's vid clip:
Tony McLean Brown
A Western NC hillbilly through and through, Tony McLean Brown was born in the small town of Enka-Candler outside of Asheville. His parents re-named him when he was 3 years old to Tony (a nickname provided by his grandfather) McLean (middle name of his Uncle Michael) while retaining his legal surname Brown.
Throughout his career, Tony McLean Brown worked as a farmer, computer programmer, and management consultant – in his adventurous years – author, song-writer, bass player, poet, pilot, mountaineer, certified scuba diver, and competitor in professional bull riding, NASCAR late model racing, Toughman boxing, Crossfit Open, Ironman, pole vaulting, marathon and ultra-marathon running, as well as parenting.
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