Healing Earth Is All Our Business

Healing Earth is all our business. Every single one of us.We're past the point where we can get by with some people caretaking Earth and other people couldn't-care-less-ing Earth.

This is all-hands-on-deck time. This is no-choice time.

Healing Earth

Tomorrow is Earth Day, and we need to be working toward healing Earth more than ever before.

A recent post on Instagram by Kris Carr took my breath away. It wasn't for its beauty. It was for its shocking visual impact and also for the factual and unsettling accounting that accompanied it. Here it is:

George Washington Bridge before the Environmental Protection Agency was established and after it was established.

As Kris said, we cannot let this happen.

By what would be, in effect, turning back the clock to a time of horrendous pollution, we would deplete Earth's lifespan as if in double- or triple-time.It's inconceivable that this could happen, and yet this is the road we're currently on.

If the current administration can't see its way to continue with the Earth-healing and, therefore, life-extending measures that have been put in place, then the task rests fully on us.Ideally, it would be a shared task. Ideally, Earth's health and the longevity of generations to come would be of great importance to our government.

We can't count on that, at this time.

Healing Earth is a matter of worldwide importance and impact. It's critical that we understand that, if we're to succeed.I don't know about you, and yet for me, I want us to succeed. I want my great-nieces and great-nephews, and their future children, to have a healthy planet to thrive on.

It's All Our Business

For us to succeed in restoring Earth's health, we must continue with measures already set in place and add additional measures.

Those measures can be accomplished on a home-by-home, person-by-person basis.

For example:

For those areas that are experiencing relief from drought, behaving as though the drought is still present will help conserve water.

Here in New Hampshire, it was reported this morning that water conservancy set in place during last year's drought will be required at least through September.

That means no watering of lawns, although gardens can be watered. And it means no washing of cars at home, although professional car washes are available.

My hope is that California will effect similar measures to help retain the benefits of the rains they've recently received.

Another example:

The simple act of recycling. I am stringent when it comes to recycling and composting. Everything that can be recycled, is recycled. Everything that can be composted, is composted.

On the weekly trash day, the recycling receptacle will be nearly full while the trash receptacle will have one kitchen-sized bag in it.

Anyone can do that. And the thing is, there are immediate benefits for the home and for Earth.

One more example:

No more plastic shopping bags. You know the ones I mean.

If I forget to bring one of my reusable shopping bags to a store, I'll suck it up in one of two ways: 1) I'll buy yet another reusable bag at the checkout or 2) I won't use any bag for my purchase.

Those horrid bags are the best worst invention ever, I swear. They're polluting our landfills and our oceans. They're killing wildlife on land and sea.

There's almost no excuse - and maybe there is wholly no excuse - for using those flimsy plastic Earth-killers anymore.

It's Time

The only time we have is the present, and it's now that we need to dig in and get our hands dirty on behalf of Earth.

And it's perhaps helpful to remember that when we work on behalf of Earth, we work on behalf of life itself; human, animal, elemental...

Without a healthy Earth, there can't be healthy life. It's that simple.

Healing Earth is all our business. Peace.