April 22 is Earth Day, and its time to bring on the blinkers and the sunshades. For all its worth, it’s a time to take stock of where we the world, are heading. To quote George Orwell, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle“.
The trends don’t look very encouraging, as global warming continues to rise, and some scientists have conceded it might be too late to do anything about it. I’m not a pessimist though; I just think there needs a greater will to change things, because it appears to me, like inertia in mass motion. Something that needs a collective will, can only begin with you and me.
By nature, we humans like doing things the same over and over again until something forces us to confront the issue. It might be too late to do anything when that break point is reached. But there are two sides to the fence. Just like some who say the earth is flat or man never landed on the moon. Actually I’m astonished that there are a small group of people who claim that global warming is made up and it’s a conspiracy theory to manipulate global trends. Rightly or wrongly, it makes sense to treat the Earth with more respect, don’t you agree?
Some remote places in the world are seeing major changes happening in decades, and not even in a few hundred years. It looks alarming, actually. Take the case of the Golden Toad of Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest. This rare species of toad has not been seen since 1989 though it was a protected species in a protected forest. It died out because there was not enough moisture clouds accumulating over its habitat to form pools of water for it to breed.
Lets (again) whip out the usual list of do’s and dont’s for Earth Day.
- Don’t let the water run while brushing your teeth
- Take the public transport to work, if it’s possible
- Recycle paper, plastics, aluminium…etc
- Go digital, use less paper. I knew Google was joking all along.
- Go see the world, while you have the time (!)
That last one is probably, maybe, quite useful, since you may feel the need to capture shots of these places while they are still around, (now). Perhaps for posterity (?)