All Things Green

This is my first post on this very new blog of mine. Why am I writing about All Things Green? Well I sort of started thinking about the environment, now that I’m fast approaching my golden years. But what really made me take the leap was the fact that my 12 year old daughter became a vegetarian. At first my wife and I thought that it was a passing phase but it’s almost one year now and she has been steadfast in her conviction.

My wife, my other daughter and I still eat meat but we do support my younger daughter. Anyway, once she became a vegetarian, she started on the save the planet thing. Now I don’t know if vegetarianism and saving the planet are married, but it seems to me that when one is a vegeterian almost always one is also a save the planet kind of person. Although it may not be true in the reverse, if one is a save the planet person they are not necessarily vegetarians. Phew…

Anyway, I don’t want to lose my train of thought. For years I thought, no I felt, that there was something eerily wrong with our climate. Now I was not a Global Warming kind of thinker, but I do recall that when I was a kid in New York City winters were cold and summers were hot. Now a days the weather is all mixed up.

Both my daughters are animal lovers. I thought I was, but that was until they grew up and really showed me what animal lovers are. My older daughter wants to be a Veterinarian when she grows up. Both cry when we watch the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet and the issue is endangered species. They became so perplexed about the plight of the Polar Bear. According to one of the documentaries we saw, the Polar Bear may become extinct in as little as two years. Yeah, by the end of this decade they could be extinct and it is due to Global Warming.

Am I concerned about the planet? You bet I am. So we started doing little things to help the environment, and toward saving the planet. We use the new low energy light bulbs, we recycle everything, and try to demonstrate a passion for Earth. The way I see it, when I die my legacy will be my two daughters and their offspring. At the rate this planet is moving there may not be a sustainable planet for my grand children and or great grand children.

You know how many of us drink bottled water now by choice? Well in a year or two everyone may be forced to buy bottled water. The reserve of drinkable water is shrinking. In some places, right here in the USA people are already being forced to buy drinking water and are going to jail for watering their lawns.

When I was teenager, Charlton Heston stared in a movie called Soylent Green. It was a police story set in the future. He was investigating a crime, a murder to be exact, and we, the viewers, were shown how the future was going to be. The rich ate well, lived well and dressed well. Everyone else — and there were only rich and poor, no middle class — ate what they could. Giant bull dozer’s would scoop up the activist that were picketing, etc. Anyway as the movie progressed you’d see that same scene played over and over. Whenever people congregated for to long the bull dozer’s would scoop them up and haul them away.

Finally Heston solves the crime and the mystery of why the people were being scooped up and hauled away. It turns out that a worker in one of the food processing plants found out that the Government had found a way to make a food product out of people, they called it Soylent Green, and that is what the masses were being fed. That is were the famous line in Saturday night Live comes from. Phil Hartman used to imitate Charlton Heston and would go around yelling “it’s people, we’re eating people.”

Seems to me that we are heading in that direction. Maybe not eating people, not yet anyway, but in general, it sure sounds like somewhere we are heading.

Ok, so I don’t want to be an alarmist, but the way we earthlings take care of the planet is truly appalling. So I figured if I begin to do my small part, and who knows maybe someone will actually read this and think that they too would like to do something about the earth, we may some how be able to save the polar bear. Sort of like paying it forward for all the great, wonderful things the earth has given us. Things like fruits and vegetables and water.

Anyway, just my thoughts. Till next time…

Peace!