We get up every morning as I did this morning and for many they are able to get up and get on with it. The fact that you can means breathing is a given. I looked around this morning and yes it is winter here, but it is dry and the air is not clean. Okay I live in Boksburg South Africa and Johannesburg as a whole is rife with pollution so it's expected. It's expected, what a terrible thing to say, we should not expect to find our air polluted, we should not expect to find our streets filled with rubbish, we should not be burying tons not non biodegradable rubbish in the earth and we sure as hell shouldn't see the crap we as humans manufacture and use floating around our oceans in the size of mountains that are causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of animals. WTF are we doing?
My wife and I have made some changes, we take our own recyclable shopping bags to the store when we buy anything, we put all kitchen leftovers and rubbish into the ground(compost) and buy as many things as possible in glass.
I remember when I was a kid that milk and fruit juice was delivered to our doorstep in glass bottles for witch you put out coupons the night before. These were exchanged for your empty ones. Try doing that these days, these will get stolen and the poor milkman will also stand a very high percentage chance of being hijacked and shot, but back on point is that even Coca Cola was in glass. By far the largest soft drink brand in the world and these days they don't seem to care too much for the planet, but the real culprits are us. We support all the companies whose greed is destroying our planet.
People say I moan a lot, but I think if more people moaned about the same stuff that gets me going there may come a time that would be a lot less to moan about. You do realise that when you see wrong being done and you say & do nothing, you are are aiding the problem.
This kind of stuff should scare you even more if you are still young, if you have children and grandchildren. Where are all the future children going to live and what quality of life will they have if the planet they are supposed to live on is screwed up beyond repair? When is anyone going to point out to some countries that they are grossly overpopulated and running off to overpopulate another country is not the answer. Have less children (which finacilly would be a great idea for most of the folks in the countries I'm referring to) and start actively producing more of what the world does need. Some glass and cardboard products instead of all the plastic.
As for all the large companies who are guilty of deforestation, you lot really should be on trial for attempted murder. These companies know full well what they are doing to the planet and refuse to stop, why, greed. So sir, next time you kiss your child or grandchild goodnight, also remember to tell them that you don't really give a crap about them or their future, no no, the money won't help if they have no world to spend it on or will have to fly through tons of cash in a hurry to upkeep their health. As for the rest of us. Plant trees, get as many people around you to plant trees, get large groups to encourage your countries to plant trees. Many countries are suffering droughts, simply because we are allowing our world to turn into a desert. Humans put themselves on a pedestal above all else, but we are failing ourselves and our future generations and our world miserably. Enough for right now, go plant a tree.
Improvise Adapt & Overcome
A few surprises on the list there.
Which ones surprised you mate?
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I thought Johannesburg would have been higher up on the list. They were at number 2 for poor air quality recently. Next time you fly in look for the brown haze, you can't miss it.
I'm not sure that's up to date, but I'll do an updated piece at another point, but yes, it is sickening to see what we breathe in everyday.
Continue to moan, Pete! If it begins to irritate people, the more likely they are to think about the problem and maybe they will start to moan about it, too.
Our societies are so short-sighted in trying to meet consumer needs at the lowest competitive price and do not ever look at life-cycle cost of the product. Things like the cost of disposing of plastic or paper, and the replacement cost of reclaiming land destroyed in the production of a product should be a required cost when determining the price of a product! If not, there really is no cost for those things from a manufacturer's viewpoint.
Of course products will be expensive, but that means people will decide whether or not something is worth buying. Since they are the ones to pay the ultimate cost anyway, at least it would be on the price tag.
If the plastic doll house for a child to play with for ten days is a thousand of whatever monetary unit, maybe something less costly would be a better option. Hiding costs only hides it at the retail level because someone, some day, will pay for the floating trash islands one way or another. Like the day the last edible fish is pulled out of the ocean and remaining humanity starts paying the overdue bill.
Thanks Willy. Exactly that people say they care, but seem to do so only in the moment. Sadly bad decisions always come back to bite us in the ass.
One thing Nature gave us too much of is the ability to decide that something we know is important, is not actually important, and bury it away in memory so we won't have to make a conscious decision. Called denial.
Wooow can’t believe BrisVegas is on there! They’ve banned single use plastic bags here in the major supermarkets. That’s great but it’s all a bit too little too late. I also believe that the planet, left to its own devices, has the ability to clean the mess we keep making, we just need to stop for a bit.
Sadly Africa and most third world areas are the dumping ground for whatever is hazardous stuff's. Lots of the supermarkets are only now starting to advocate paperackets and such so who knows. I wonder if people really understand the power of nature and what will happen when we get in it's way?