Tell Me What You See!
Author: Robert De Angelis
I have spent years studying many aspects of our environment and the impacts of humans. I am becoming more and more stressed out with the things I see regularly. I often wonder how everyone perceives the things in our everyday lives. How do we not see the obvious? To illustrate this, I put together a little chart to explain my stress. Tell me what you see?
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What I see now: |
What I used to see: |
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A Cadillac Escalade or large SUV or pickup truck that is used for routine driving |
A wasteful and inefficient way to move things. A glutton for gasoline and a large contributor to climate change. |
A nice car. Prestigious. |
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Frequent vacations in faraway places |
A huge waste of energy and a major contributor to climate change. A way to spread disease. This may be a fun and educational thing to do. |
A sign of affluence. A fun thing to do. |
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Water in Plastic Bottles |
A huge waste of energy, and a major polluter of our waterways. A sign of lack of caring and lack of education. A more expensive way to get the same thing. |
A convenience. A quality product. |
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A traditional huge house |
A waste of embodied carbon and natural resources. An ongoing polluter, using fossil fuels to heat it every year forever. |
A sign of affluence. A luxury. Cool… |
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Fruit and vegetables with no insects |
Something that even the insects won’t eat. Pesticide-laden spinach and other foods. |
Clean veggies and fruit! |
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Weedless lawns |
An attempt to make only one species grow in an area. This is not natural and causes lots of chemical pollution to our waterways and harm to insects. I see something ugly. |
A beautiful lawn. Someone who cares about how things look. |
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Plastic straws, cups and packaging that is used once and then discarded |
A significant polluter of oceans, and a waste of material and energy. Things with no value. |
Convenience. |
I know this may seem very negative, but it is not. It is realistic. What saddens me is that we have all the technology and knowledge to manage ongoing and future environmental disasters. But convenience and sometimes the image (what is that… really?) are more important to us than caring for others now and for future generations.
I urge everyone to read and think and absorb all the wonderful information available and take actions such as:
- When you buy your next car, purchase an energy efficient hybrid or electric car
- Get a free home energy audit, and when you replace your heating system, use new technology and get rid of fossil fuel systems
- Sign up for Community Solar or purchase “clean” electricity
- Stop trying to manage nature with chemicals
- Stop using single use plastics. There are plenty of options available.
- Minimize non-essential travel.
- Buy only what you need and buy with consideration for the environment
Do you believe in individual responsibility? I recommend we not wait for the government or big business or someone else to fix the problem. Let’s take ownership and start now. There are many things we can all do, and they are explained on the website for CURE100 . The list above are just a few high priority items that are easy to do and show a sense of caring and will add up to make a big difference. For me, it’s not about saving a planet. It is about how we treat each other, including future generations. It is about saving people, animals and plants.
2 thoughts on “Tell Me What You See!”
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Thank you, Bob. I am happy to read this article and the honest voice. I was talking with some friends about the idea of remaining hopeful—and was alerted about a rising movement of environmental groups focusing on Ecological Collapse: how to mitigate, i.e. accept and make less painful— this reality.
I want to see friends in Europe and Asia, but don’t want to fly.
I want to turn on the AC but will just open the windows.
I have definitely developed a more sensitive radar for materials of modern conveniences: paper, plastic, chemicals, cleaning supplies, additives…
Really hope these messages reach more people. We can’t be afraid of “negative” sounding messages any more. it is too serious and too real.
Eleanor
Thank you Bob for a wonderful and thought-provoking blog!
One proviso: I don’t mind someone driving a large car if it is electric. I have no problem with someone’s large house if it uses exclusively clean, renewable energy. If you prefer a plastic bottle, I am OK, provided you re-use it till it falls apart (which, as we know, never happens!). Set your thermostat to whatever you want provided you use heat pumps in your home. Soon I hope we will say that we don’t mind someone taking a cruise or flying on vacation provided it is an electric ship or airplane. My point is that the root cause of the stress is the carbon impact, not the big car, big house or vacation per se.