Earth Day Reflection

04/21/2007

Paul Munnis


Looking down on earth from a light airplane at 6,000 feet there is an undeniable order to the land. You get a sense, from the neat fields, from the precise compass layout, from the straight roads, from the straight line routing of power lines, from the apparent order of cities and their layout, that man is practicing good stewardship over the earth.

Then as you descend into a city airport to land you observe a yellow haze and you know you are seeing air pollution.

It is the first sign of trouble.

A trip down the Mississippi reminds you of the polluted water, the agricultural runoff, the bad drinking water, and the amount of sewage and effluent being discharged into the mighty Miss. You know there is room for improvement. You know this is going on in most bodies of water in the USA. Fresh water is our lifeblood.

You read news about malformed frogs, dying bees, and watch films about global warming and listen to the controversy surrounding it, and you think that man’s stewardship is in need of improvement.

Is it all about passing laws? I don’t think so because laws are broken daily and the cost of enforcement is growing steeper. Stewardship must come from the hearts and the minds of our citizens. When you drive down a road and you see a passing vehicle toss their garbage onto the highway, or see the amount of litter along our roadways, or participate in a road maintenance clean-up project, it is clear that any fix has to start with the citizens themselves. It’s a sort of 80-20 proposition where 20% of our fellow citizens are hurting the other 80% of us. It needs to change.

As we approach Earth Day 2007 we need to ask ourselves what we can do for Mother Earth to make it a well kept and healthy home for humans and for those that we share the planet with. We can do much better if we want to. We can start with little things like putting a couple of litter bags in the car for use in discarding trash and food. We can go on to putting soda cans and bottles into the litter bags. We can insist our power company clean up its power plant discharge and pay a penny or two more for electric to assure that it is done. We can insist that the EPA be empowered to manage the bigger issues. We can start to develop alternative energy sources that are earth friendly.

I see good signs and I see room for improvement. Let's push a little harder on the improvement challenges and reap the benefits.