I Am The Earth

I see my own horizons with my own tired eyes. The fog is lifting from my vision. An internal clock, set for me before time began, is ticking in my brain. I have waters that flow and waters that stay. Swim with me through the wicked jungles; float with me on my subtle currents. Let me carry you to far reaching lands and caress your body with my gentle hands. Lie on my shores and rest. Raise yourself a chair in the temple of the sand. My trees wait to shade you from the sweat of the sun. Relax in the warm breeze and drink from my fruit. You’ll find an ease of familiarity in the air. My birds will sway in the wind and haunt you with their song. Dig your toes into my white beaches and let down your hair. You will suffer no issue while I am here. Your body will lack for nothing. The sweet water that I give to you is yours to keep. Nourish yourself well and hydrate your soul. I take interest in your well being and want for your safety. I give you leave to use my resources. They are there for your having. I grant you fresh air and soft summer breezes. All that I own is yours to have.

Now lose the distractions that follow you in your life.

My land and sea and skies are the Rosetta stone for this world. I am the translation. Read me in every language. I cannot be misunderstood. The relationship between you and I is paramount. I have life with you, but will survive without you. You have life with me, but nothing without.  I am the alpha and the omega. I was here long before you were born and will be here long after you are gone. The sky I made clear and you smear it. The water is fresh but you stain it. The land you stand on is scarred and broken. I give myself freely and yet you rape me.

See beyond your ideas and affiliations. The arguing of people makes me ill. The fighting between you is killing me. Your apathy is striking; your waste appalling. Your things are made from the sum of my parts, parts that are slowly dwindling away. Your money is useless. How much clean water and air can you buy when it’s all gone? The battle for these things will be fought for by your children, and I’ll only be able to watch. Give them the tools now. Teach them stewardship and sustainability. Grant them an audience with me. Fill their hands with dirt, their lungs with fresh air.

You can’t continue to wait and watch.

Karma is a predator and it’s hunting you.

I know because I am the earth. 

My new friend Dan has a beautiful, very large wall mount of a Lake Trout on the wall in his family's north country cottage. As we listened to his recounting of the tale that hooked the fish and pulled it up through the ice, YES THE ICE, the question was asked whether or not the fish was eaten. It was. Knowing this was the case, the person asking the question made it clear that he would not eat a fish taken from those waters. Since the fish was taken nearly 30 years ago it seemed like it would not be an issue as water in our lakes was not as polluted as now. Or was it? In the fifties and sixties, as our national might's were being determined by manufacturing and the jobs that it created, we started to realize, thank God, that we were sickening our environment. Rules were enacted and things began to change. The question is, with our population ever on the increase, even with the rules created to protect our environment, is the water cleaner now or back then? Cleaner with less people on the planet out there polluting the water or cleaner with more people polluting but more rules in place to watch over it?
Stay tuned.

I've been working on my new book for so long that I haven't gotten back to my blog roots. But don't worry, I remember what's important to me. The fight is still on for our beautiful world. 
http://peoplesclimate.org/march 
Here's the link to one of the most important functions happening in our state at the moment. Join the 350.org organizers and the everyday people as they band together in an effort to save our environment.
There can be no argument from anyone, any political side or point of view, no argument from any living creature that our air, water and the earth that we stand on aren't the most important things for the future of our children. 
All the good jobs in the world and the money that they create won't buy a breath of fresh air or a drink of clean water when it's all gone.
Word.

I got sick of looking at the garbage across the street; you know, the stuff from everybody's recycle bin. It just finds its way into the trees and bushes on the road edge. I've been driving by it for weeks now since the snow melted. 
Is it worse that I waited so long to go pick it up, or that it was there in the first place?

I had some time at the end of the day so I wandered down the parkway to Point Breeze. The lake was calm and inviting for early April. I took the time to walk out to the end of the pier and enjoy the view. 
The first thing I noticed was a beautiful Pepsi bottle floating in the flotsam. Then all the plastic swirling deliciously in the backwater. After that, I kicked a fully rigged rubber worm with my foot. It slid quietly into the rocks out of sight before I could retrieve it. -dammit- The old styrofoam worm boxes were a joy to behold, resting among the rocks. At least there was an old shoe and what looked like a shirt down there. Ah, fashion! 
When I reached the end, I got a great look at a big ball of used fishing line lying on the path. I know that art is there to behold, and we should keep our hands off, but I just had to put it in the pocket of my hoody and take it.
I hope the museum guard didn't bust me. 
Epilogue: There's nothing I like better than picking up some other "sportsman's" bullshit.

I'm vehemently in opposition to the natural gas drilling method known as hydrofracking, hydraulic fracturing, high volume hydraulic fracking, fracing, or most commonly referred to as fracking. 
I use very little natural gas in my home, but I do use it. As much as we need to change our habits and our consumption of burned fuels (coal, oil, gasoline, natural gas, etc) we are still tied to them... for the very short term. It's not out of our power to make these changes.
As far as fracking goes: until they can retrieve natural gas and oil (yes, oil) from the ground without polluting it AND the air, it should be banned as a practice in the world. 
I received a copy of "The Flowback" from a friend long ago, and I commonly refer to the paragraph written at the bottom of the front page:
"THREE KINDS OF PEOPLE FAVOR HYDROFRACKING:
Those whose greed blinds them; those who have swallowed the Kool-Aid and believe the industry's lies; and those who are not as yet informed. At the moment, most belong in the third category. But We The People, are waking up. Look around and see what we are accomplishing in this world. Critical mass will soon be reached. There is not enough wealth in the whole universe to withstand critical mass and truth, an idea whose time has come.
In the case of hydrofracking, truer words have never been spoken."

With spring almost here, the dregs of winter begin to show. It's hard to see the litter of humanity; the painful reality of the fact that we throw away more than we use. As the woods begin to open up with the melt of the snow pack, it's obvious that a clean-up is paramount.
I know this: if we could trade the desire we have for sex with the desire to clean up our environment, our world would be spotless.

Probability: “A mathematical statement about how likely it is that harm will be suffered from a hazard.”* 
In this case, the hazard is global warming.

      

On a scale of 0-100, we assess that it is 100% that climate change has already happened, is happening now, and that it will continue long into our own and our children’s future.

Justification:

Have you ever seen a glacier melt? Felt the ocean warm up on acquired solar rays because there is no ice left to reflect it? Ever stepped in a thermokarst? Watched a cow burp methane? How about this: have you ever seen a carbon dioxide molecule absorb the suns energy and hold on to it? What’s that stuff we breathe in every second? You can’t see it, but it’s there. Good thing, too.

We can form a hypothesis or induction about what the answer might be. For instance:

“After the onset of the industrial revolution (In 1750, or so) and particularly in the last fifty years, the amount of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere shot up from 280ppm to 384ppm, where it has probably never been for twenty million years…”

“And we know that this increase in CO2 is going to give us a different climate than the one we have now, because in 670,000 straight years, whenever CO2 has gone up, temperatures have gone up, and whenever CO2 in the atmosphere has gone down, temperatures have gone down. So to say that the additional CO2 added by humans is not a problem is to bet against 670,000 straight years of data, and to hope that we are going to get lucky this time.”**   

April 19, 2013 NY Outdoor News, page 23: “off the charts” record heat last year, statistics show

“Washington (AP) America set an off-the-charts heat record in 2012. “A brutal combination of a widespread drought and mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperature last year up to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit, the government announced last month. That’s a full degree warmer than the old record set in 1998. Breaking temperature records by an entire degree is unprecedented, scientists say. Normally, records are broken by a tenth of a degree or so.”

“These records do not occur like this in an unchanging climate,” said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “And they are costing many billions of dollars.”

*Miller, Ch 11; Environmental hazards and human health 

Page 237

**Nate Lewis, Caltech energy chemist as quoted in T.L. Friedman’s “Hot, Flat, and Crowded”

Page 162-163

        

       “If you really think that the environment is less important than the economy, try holding your breath while you count your money.”

Dr. Guy McPherson