Think Now or (Just Perhaps) For Ever Hold Your Peace

We are a nation dependent on the automobile, a convenience that has benefited our culture in many wonderful ways; however, with several un-intended consequences the ‘back story’ is very prominent today:

1. pollution
2. endless lines of cars choking our highways and by-ways and slowing commutes across America to a crawl.
3. and, we have grown to worship that which in its present form stifles freedom and limits the quality of life.

However, our millions of cars could be moving bill boards; daily reminders of the job we all have at hand. The idea: Let’s turn lemons into lemonades and plaster bumper stickers, made out of recycled hemp on our bumpers, slogans that educate and motivate all of us to become pro-active on behalf of creation. You know: Give a hoot, don’t pollute. Earth day every day! Only you can prevent forest fires. Reinforcing the validity of systemic behavioral change is essential; and if everyone is on board change will happen.

Think globally and act locally was indeed one such auto adornment, a bumper stick I still see on the Prius or electric vehicle; and a bumper sticker and slogan that has endured the test of time. However, as rainforests rapidly disappear, fish stocks are over-drawn, water supplies diminish and the global atmosphere changes we need to both think and act globally, now – today and not tomorrow for tomorrow will be too late.

A few weeks ago the intrepid defender of whales, Captain Paul Watson, had one of his ships rammed and sunk by the illegal Japanese whaling fleet. Relentless in their baloney scientific justification scam, the Japanese should be held accountable for diminishing the quality of the global family as they exterminate whales for no reasonable purpose. They hunt in protected waters thousands of miles from home and thankfully, Captain Watson is acting globally, on our behalf. Blessings to this man and his international crew. I think about a planet without whales, and Watson is acting on their on our behalf on a daily basis.

Nearer home, yet far away, the Amazon and Congo rainforests are still under siege. Out of sight, out of mind, yet these lungs of the planet when gone will dictate the quality of air living creatures breathe across the globe. It is no longer a ‘so what’ if another acre is lost to cattle crazing to grow burgers for the fast food outlets. The global loss of these fragile eco-systems demand action. I act local and have eliminated beef from my diet. Is that enough?

My dad lost a lung to lung cancer at age 51. He died at 89 so I knew him for many years existing on one lung. Besides the diminished quality of life, he was never the same after that operation. Let’s say the globe loses one of the two lungs – the Congo rainforest goes; or the Amazon, or God forbid, both – what will the quality of life look like on planet earth?

We have to “sink” the man made carbon (that is put it someplace) from our fossil fuel addiction, and the zooplankton and phytoplankton in the sea, coupled with the soil and trees of the land have been the Creator’s gift for consistent absorption; but taking away ‘the carbon sinks’ at the rate we are doing it is courting disaster. (At this point someone always says ‘you are all gloom and doom’ – not so – we can give up eating at fast food restaurants, eliminating cattle consumption all together; eliminate soil contaminants on our lawns and gardens and plant trees – yes, we can make a difference – this is a way to act globally).

Back to the magnificent whales: I have been privileged to watch gray whales cavort in the Baja, pods of Orca’s in the San Juan’s of Washington and Canada, right whales off Cape Cod at Stellwagon Bank and breaching whales off Maui. A few years ago I was privileged on Earth Talk Today to host Captain Paul Watson. We watched video he supplied, watched with tears in our eyes, as the slaughter was documented – innocent creatures of the deep symbolic of the majesty of all creation slaughtered for no reason other than sushi satisfaction at home.

Is it time to say no more Japanese cars in our garages, Japanese cameras in our hands, Japanese TV’s on our walls, or Japanese computers at our desks? Does that really mean no Sony, Honda, Nikon, Mitsubishi, etc. etc. etc? Think globally and act locally is what we can do because our choices matter. You decide!

Paul Watson, far from family and friends, risking life to save the lives of strangers, who just happen to be the largest creatures to have ever lived on the earth. In addition, thanks to Atossa Soltani of Amazon Watch and all those who fight to save the rainforest – our lungs of the planet.

Act globally - not so hard when you really stop and think about it.