Today would be a good day for a hippy-rant.
(If you are a climate change denier, this post isn't for you.)
Earth Day is today and I want to share a cute graphic and be like "Do X,Y, and Z and together we can make a difference," but I feel disingenuous.
Doing something for positive change is often better than doing absolutely nothing, but seeing as we have a time limit, today (and everyday) I'd like us Birdhists to consider what would be the most optimized courses of action to save the Earth?
Once we pass the planet's deadline, we are less likely to find a "cure" for environmental crisis, leaving only palliative care and a lot of unnecessary suffering before the end.
I'm very much a tree hugger/environmentalist and wish there were more of us. When we do right by the earth, we help our beloved birds and other critters, we help each other, everyone wins.
During my many years in FL, I've seen the garbage left upon beaches, especially after Spring Break and similar occasions. Many coastal areas in South FL now flood regularly vs. occasionally due to sea level rise. When I volunteered at the local wildlife center, I've seen wildlife caught in fishing wire and other pieces of trash, and animals caught by feral cats. I've seen human-caused red tide, blue-green algae. I've seen Burmese Pythons on the side of the road across Alligator Alley and reminded of the decimation they're causing to the Everglades. In the canals and inlets, Manatees are marked with propellor marks on their backs. In Naples, green areas are being leveled for over-priced condos and shopping malls.
Coming back to birds, we currently are at a loss of 3 billion birds since 1970 in the US & Canada alone. It seems like we aren't helping the earth as much as we need to.
To be proper stewards of the planet, we were told by our teachers that we need to recycle, but only >15% of the things we try to recycle actually gets recycled. Gaslit by oil/plastic companies, the truth has been coming out,
"Recycling was never designed to work; it was designed to make us buy more."
We're told to take shorter showers to save water while huge corporations like Nestle, 3M, and Dupont are allowed to exploit and contaminate our resources.
To me, it appears that ultimately, to save the earth, it comes down to convincing those with great financial and political influence, ones found in corporations with their lobbyists and their homies, the corrupt politicians, to make the most impactful change.
I could be wrong and I'm open to better ways.
At SXSW, a worker for big Pharma relayed how a co-worker of theirs is working from the inside the company to make change, including having an outside company audit their eco-friendly, hopefully not greenwashed initiatives.
People like them give me hope. Keep fighting the good fight in good ways.
NAMASEEB
Other resources:
https://time.com/amazon-rainforest-disappearing/ (conures, macaws, Linnies, and more live there).
