On the first Earth Day 33 years ago, when I lived in a rural area where we got our water from wells and most of our neighbors were farmers, one of my (non-farmer) neighbors and I packed up our total of five kids and went out at 5:30 a.m. to post signs at all the local supermarkets about the dangers of phosphates to our water quality. A small act, granted, but it got me an interview on a local radio station about that issue and it was something I could actually get done and feel good about.
This from Earth Day 2003
Kalilily Time
Just an old lady talking to herself
With a heavy heart I read the roll call of poisons, perpetrators and politics surrounding the need for Earth Day, just to remind myself.
But today what stands out in my mind most of all, are the birth defects from mercury and the miscarriages by women who live near the contaminated cranberry bogs.
It seems to me this is THE convoluted hallmark we have been waiting for since the ’60’s to appear that tells us, we have gone too far and are now poisoning our own. The balance has tipped, not in our favor. We have finally reached a point where we are our own undoing, and by killing off our chances for the human race to thrive, we will end up like the asteroid that was the dinosaur’s demise.
This is the stuff of which the doomsday 60’s and 70’s science fiction was made.
I know that there always have been wars, pestilence, plagues, and natural disasters in our human history. But it just seems to me that the smarter we get as a species, the more damage we cause to the world around us. Yes, too soon old; too late smart. “Too late” is almost on us, it seems.
Hmmmmm interesting !!!