Daniela Ginta, Freelance Writer

Gratitude makes the journey better. Kindness, too.

Category: Environment Page 14 of 19

Voting For The Next 40 Years

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On October 10, 2015

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Social issues

Initially published as a column on NewsKamloops on October 9, 2015.

October 19 is around the corner and the word of the day is voting. It’d better be. There is much at stake and citizens of this country are the ones in charge of it all by casting their ballot. The importance of this year’s voting is immense. We are voting not just for the next four years, but the next 40 and beyond.

Perusing the news is enough to help give us a bird’s eye view of the matters at hand and persuade anyone with a conscience to go out and vote. Ethical standards, or lack thereof rather, stand out as the driving engine behind many a foul matters that surface through various media outlets.

And we have to be discerning and realize that even though some issues seem to not pertain to us all, they do, more than we realize.

We have yet to see positive action that will address the death of the 1,181 missing and murdered Aboriginal women, and, while at that, action that will recognize and address violence against women, a dreadful reality still very present in our ever so polite society. Comments such as the one by former conservative MP John Cummings that blame the victims for putting themselves at risk rather than seeking the perpetrators are at best, shameful, and should make us realize that safety is not a privilege of a few but the right of everyone.

We have yet to see a justice system that will not be in any way influenced by money, if the perpetrators happen to have them, but will hold the value of truth and honesty above anything else.

We have yet to see a system where no victim will be ignored in any way, or their suffering or death brushed aside and classified as not important enough to warrant a public inquiry (see the case of foster children and youths who died while in government care). Public inquiries have the the potential to bring better rules that will see children protected and minded as they should be, and better qualified and ethically-driven people in key positions.

A society is never healthy until health is seen at all levels and by all people. That implies many things: ability to assess the situation, courage to address it and take action, and last but not least, transparency when it comes to the public knowing about it. Referendums to address issues that concern us all should be commonplace in a democratic society like ours. Unfortunately, these things are the result of people pushing for them to happen.

Hence the need to have our candidates committed to make changes that will see better things happen for Canadians, at all levels of society, and also willing to maintain transparency along the way, a feature that has been sorely missing more and more from our political landscape, a detrimental thing to us all, save for a selected few.

We have yet to see government action that will address climate change. There is a plethora of signs pointing to a suffering environment and no matter which side you happen to be on (the deniers’ numbers are dwindling by the day), the truth is that we all depend on clean air, water and soil. All of them have been suffering lately and that needs to be addressed.

Expectedly, climate change has also become one hot issue with the voters, for many of them ranking as the second most important after the economy.

Climate change is real, despite some candidates not being convinced by the existing evidence (explained as such by Conservative candidate for the North Okanagan-Shuswap, Mel Arnold). Evidence is not only here but staring us in the face; not a pretty stare either.

Whether at home or abroad, there are many changes we see in the environment which will only get worse unless properly addressed. The cause needs no further explaining: the progressively increased levels of greenhouse gases are causing warming of the atmosphere, which in turn brings ill such as rising sea levels, warming and acidification of the oceans, melting of glaciers and declining of Arctic ice sheets, dwindling snow reserves that forecast longer wildfire seasons.

It starts with realizing that pollution kills and it is man-made. Scientists at Environment Canada put together a computer-generated video showing how pollution spreads across the Prairies. The video, released to the public this week, is evidence of how gases generated by massive industrial sites (oil and gas, coal-burning plants and the oilsands), travel for hundreds of kilometers, spreading over populated areas and increasing the amount if pollution past acceptable limits. That is what we are all breathing in.

Such evidence should be taken seriously by the candidates and change should follow. A country’s economy is bound to be affected by climate change and it may just be that we are at a fork in the road. We can either ask our soon-to-be-elected leaders to address climate and thus influence the economy in a positive manner while also lessening the dependence on fossil fuels, or continue on the path of exploiting natural resources knowing that Mother Nature is not one we can ever trick into abiding by human-imposed rules.

Our country’s well-being is at stake here. Public health in all aspects, environmental health, an economy that is affected by both, no issue exists by itself. They are all connected and the bettering of one will influence the others in a positive way.

If there’s ever a time to be diligent about doing our homework, this should be it. Moral values such as honesty, ethics and a sense of responsibility for today’s young generation and the ones to follow are to be the guidelines in helping us choose our future leaders. Please vote with a conscience.

 

Transparency Is All That Protects Us

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On October 1, 2015

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Kamloops, Social issues

Originally published as a column on NewsKamloops on Friday, September 25 2015. 

The recent the Volkswagen scandal is, at best, the story of a company that got caught red-handed. Perhaps it will also open the road towards looking more into companies that use proprietary software the unlawful way.

Proprietary software is no ‘one ring to rule them all’ but it sure comes close to it. Volkswagen AG showed that temptation is real, applicable, and, if you do it right enough no one is smarter, at least for a few years anyway.

The problem is, once people discover the trickery, the proverbial fan will spread the bad matter everywhere, from deceived customers, to angry environmental protection agencies, to governments who are pressed to look after our clean air needs, it will stink. As it does at the moment.

Volkswagen’s tomfoolery costs us all, whether we bought the objects of contention or not. With almost half the cars in Europe being powered by diesel, pollution takes an even uglier turn than we expected. The rigged cars add approximately 1 million tonnes of pollutants into the atmosphere and no amount of mea culpa, in German accent or not, can undo the damage that’s been done or stop the said cars from polluting further until the company fixes the problem.

That Volkswagen AG has been cited as one of the most sustainable large companies over the years makes it a sad compounded tale. A company of that scale is more than an individual suddenly stricken by evil intentions. If you as much as imagine meeting rooms full of people who could give their thumb-ups to such decisions or veto it, it makes little sense, if any, that a collective of people acted like one mind whose goal was to make money on false claims.

Public deceit is ugly in general. Public deceit that causes harm globally and increases the risk of death for us all. Just two years ago the World Health Organization declared air pollution a carcinogen and attributed up to 7 million premature deaths to it.

If we look back into the recent stories of deception that costs many people their lives (think smoking and cancer for example) we can allow ourselves to believe that some policy makers did not know any better, or that those who did and chose to mislead the public anyway because they were shareholders themselves or had ties with the industry made us all realize that the price of lying is a high one, almost always paid in human lives.

In a time when pollution and climate change are becoming too evident to ignore and the global community has to come up with laws that will stall the crash course, it is downright criminal to add the burden on the environment knowing that you do.

The case of the peanut company president that was sentenced to 28 years in prison for fraud that caused at least 9 people to die and sickened hundreds should have been a cautionary tale for all companies that dabble with deceit of any kind. Too late for Volkswagen AG to come clean but what about all the other companies that lie, hide it well and hope they’ll never get caught? How about us customers buying their products?

The question remains: why would anyone engage in lying and deceiving knowing that someone, somewhere, might just discover the trick? According to what we know of the human mind, the perceived benefits of what is to be gained often eclipse the risks of being discovered. It may be hard if not impossible to understand for those of us who want to go to bed knowing their conscience is clear (there is no better, softer pillow indeed) but it sure paints an accurate picture of human behaviour in general. History and literature abound with examples.

No subscriber to the infamous Ashley Madison affair-encouraging website thought ‘what if I get discovered?’ or they did not think it deeply enough to keep away. Lies are like defective vehicles, they really cannot take you far. Truth is solid ground, lies are not. The price of being caught is always higher than the price of saying no to lying, no matter how tempting the promise.

Deception hurts, at every level. In case of companies or governments, even more so because it makes us feel like we did not pay enough attention, or we were not diligent enough to know better and somehow prevent it. Having our trust betrayed is always a hard blow.

The only tool that can ensure our protection, at least to a certain extent, is transparency. The more we know of corporate affairs and of our own government’s actions, the more we realize that transparency is often not at the forefront of their actions.

Which is what gives election time such monumental importance. It’s a chance to look closely at what we want, reappraise our own values as individuals and communities too, apply the required scrutiny to candidates and their parties and choose wisely. As if our lives depend on it, because they do. Our children’s too.

Running on Climate – Why You Have To See It Before Casting The Ballot

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On September 24, 2015

In Environment, Learning, Life Stories, Social issues

Certain issues of today, such as climate change, need to be revisited time and time again, and stories need to be told in different ways but converging towards the same conclusion, until they leave a mark. Such is the case of the new documentary ‘Running on Climate’ by Vancouver filmmaker Robert Alstead, that addresses environmental concerns not just as a tale of woe and doom, but of hope and pursuit of change from the roots up.

It is indeed mind-boggling that any issues pertaining our survival are still a matter of debate, when the most recent Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2014 stated that our influence on climate change is real, and the recent anthropogenic greenhouse emissions are highest in history.

In other words, global warming is undeniable: glaciers are receding at an unprecedented rate, the ocean and atmosphere are warming, and sea level has risen and continues to do so, as the levels of emissions continue to increase.

Featuring Andrew Weaver, PhD, a Canadian climate scientist, Nobel prize winner and, since 2013, BC Green Party MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head on Vancouver Island, ‘Running on Climate’ ties environmental and climate change issues with politics in a way that could not be more complementary to the present day political Canadian landscape, and also highly needed as the 2015 federal elections are around the corner.

The message is unequivocal: With federal elections less than a month away and mounting evidence of Canada’s unfortunate contribution to global climate change through the relentless pursuit of fossil fuels, people need to pay attention to what lies ahead. From an environmental perspective, things will only get worse unless change is implemented, and soon.

But the documentary is hardly just a cautionary tale about global warming. Alstead tells the story of a community that has always had a penchant for living green but chose to turn greener during the provincial elections in 2013, while also telling the story of scientists turned activists turned politicians, and they did so as they realize the unfortunate metamorphosis of British Columbia, from green policy maker into a ‘carbon corridor’ for the export of fossil fuel, such as coal, liquid natural gas and bitumen.

That the story is relevant in the present political context is an understatement. What ‘Running on Climate’ does and does well is to show that the new generation of politicians are concerned with more than just politics. They are a breed that has been emerging out of deep environmental concern that runs invisible in the face of many of today’s government leaders.

In fact, they are coming from a place of need, knowing the science behind climate change and realizing that unless they get involved, whether as activists (or initially as activists, as is the case of Lynn Quarmby, PhD, SFU Professor and Green Party Candidate for Burnaby North-Seymour) or get involved in politics, change will lag or never happen, and neither is an option.

‘Running on Climate’ presents civil disobedience not as act of gratuitous bravery but a necessity seen by those who recognize that climate change is the unfortunate catalyst of the biggest economic and humanitarian crisis of our time.

One of the key messages that resurfaces throughout the documentary is that the choice is limited: we have to come to grips with our current situation or continue on the crash course we’ve been engaging since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution but more so during the last decades, a path that has lead us to infamously reaching the 400ppm in CO2 emissions.

And who better to address the current situation and become an engine for change than those who can bring facts and figures to the table. With the string of indignities that Canadian scientists have been subjected to during what has been condemned as unprecedented and profoundly un-Canadian muzzling, it seems fitting that the fight for change has to come from within.

Weaving details of climate change with a close-to-skin case study of an electoral campaign that took place on Vancouver Island, producer Robert Alstead and co-producer Jo Clarke have created the kind of pre-election tutorial we all need to revisit before October 19. We all need to know about vote-splitting and why ‘every vote counts’, and we need to see how a bunch of well-meaning ambitious volunteers can make green policies visible, rain or shine, so that we can run and influence our future come election day.

A tale of hope, ‘Running on Climate’ is worth watching and learning from. It debunks the myth of corporate funded election campaigns and shows how a cause bigger than life brings people together, empowers them to seek change and once they do, to keep on pursuing the one thing that’s worth everything to us all: survival.

‘Running on Climate’ is available nationwide in Canada starting September 22, 2015. Please stay tuned for further information on US release date.

Our School At Home And Beyond. A Glimpse

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On September 16, 2015

In Environment, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement

‘Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.’  Socrates

GrasslandsIt is not every day that I get to see a red-tail hawk swoop down for a midday meal in the grasslands. I had to stop for that one. And for the clouds that towered over the golden hills. It’s one of the most soothing landscapes I’ve even seen.

That is little boy’s classroom on the one day a week when he goes to Forest School. We sat in a circle in the middle of undulating dry grasses this morning, talked about snakes and owls and bugs, reviewed the things to do such as ‘wander far enough but not too far, know the number of whistles for this and that’, before the small feet peppered the dusty trail, following behind the teacher.

There is joy infusing our hug as I get ready to go on my way and little boy on his with the group.

20150915_105512Giggles, whispers, the trepidation of another day that brings learning through open eyes tasting the blue sky and the golden tall grasses that speak of dried-up lakes and hidden animal burrows. The land has stories to tell, it’s only fitting that we’d take ourselves and our children out here to listen.

It’s not in the books, not in the sitting upright and reminding your eyes to stay put on the word of the day. Not unless the word connects with the world you see with your eyes, the world you walk on and see transform from one day to the next, the smells that tell you learn to tell apart as you spend more time in places that you crawl through if need be to look at a bug, places you let crawl through you as reminders of life in its primal, must-see-or-else form.

worldsCome noon, I find my way back to the hills to pick up little boy. I stop a few times, it’s that beautiful. I breathe the place in: colours, smells, sun splashed lazily over velvety hills in the distance making them look like they are underwater. As if I am staring at algae-covered rocks in a stream. Two worlds in two. A world of many faces; ours.

This is what I want the boys to learn of in our school at home and in classrooms of hills and clouds.

That the world has mysteries we cannot see unless we bring ourselves close enough to it.

That everything has a key somewhere and as we get closer to understanding, we get closer to reverence, never away from it.

That we do not own the world, but are part of it. Conquering never works, gently prying the door open to knowledge, not vying for high marks and loud approval but the feeling of having understood a tinge more, that is what I dream for the boys.

Shelter to growThat they will learn reverence.

That they will be humbled by the richness of a handful of dirt and the secrets a leaf reveals as you hold it up against the sun.

That math and science are never the hated subjects, but keys to answering the whys we find as we go along.

That it is all a big picture with boundaries that keep on growing as our understanding of it grows.

Soft wallsThat the balance is fragile and our running to engage in rat races has nothing to do with balance but often leads to frantic days and connections lost, with ourselves first of all.

That school is never to be a place where we get farther away from ourselves so that we fit in, but a place where we get closer to knowing who we are, to affirming our thoughts and dreams, knowing as we go that the world has a place for each and every one of us, as we are. A place to be safe but bold, to wonder and let curiosity seep through. To help more thoughts grow.

Another hawk dances with the grasses. Another glimpse of life, death too, implied and not seen, and if seen, accepted as part of it all. Gracious, both side of it. The boys will learn this. They will learn that a glimpse is all. That we must take fully and give ourselves to it fully, that the glimpse is a gift repeating itself every day thousands of times.

skyThe side of the road is decorated in chicory flowers, as if the sky kissed the ground every now and then leaving marks of blue. Same fascinating colour, the reflection of the blue endless sky in small countless ones growing towards it, each holding the story of storms to come like delicate mysterious oracles. It is true.

The boys and I learned about it yesterday, and the amazement matched the mystery. Drawing blue petals on stalks on green, listening, asking questions, tilting their heads and blooming in almost incredulous smiles…

‘How do they do that, Mom? How do they know?’

DanceThat is what we will learn, and beyond. We will find ourselves privy to the conversation the earth has with the sky, we will have to be quiet enough to hear, keen-eyed to see, but mostly humbled enough to know that we are but another piece in the big puzzle called life, that we do not make sense without the other pieces.

That we are being given the opportunity to see it all, wonder and learn about it together is a gift as precious as life itself.

That is our dream school. We will only go as far as our gratefulness will take us.

Change Starts With Education

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On September 15, 2015

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Social issues

IMG_8606It’s the word we’re hearing every day during the ongoing campaign: change. It is, in truth, what keeps the world turning and alive, so it make sense that the elections would become the epitome of the very concept.

The word and its envisioned wake get people fantasizing about what will be after October 19. Change alone is not what we should be after, but positive change, visible and beneficial for all Canadians. And we need a lot of good change to make things better.

With so much at stake, it is only natural to experience the slight hand tremors of the overwhelmed voter. There is no simple answer and yes, there is work involved in searching for the best option that will make the said tremors go away. It is really not enough to just show up to vote; we need to become informed voters who know who and why. If you find yourself hesitating, you’re not alone.

Every day, a new event unfolds, at home or internationally, new boundaries are being traced and we find ourselves wondering who to vote for, so we’re back to the drawing board once again. Who to choose? Why? It might as well be that common sense will invite to clarity; it always does when you let it do its thing.

Needs should come first. Food, water, medical care, education, financial support for those in need, addressing security issues that will not see anyone unfairly monitored or even worse, prosecuted, developing climate change strategies that will see alternative energy source industries thrive and people safe from natural disasters. For starters.

Good food; it is a right, not a privilege. We now know enough about nutrition to realize that corporate agriculture is not the way to go. No amount of pesticide is safe enough, and food coming from huge silos, whether it is vegetables or meat is just not the same as locally grown or raised products.

Food should come unprocessed, supplied by small businesses with faces we can see and know; with people who stand behind their product and supply not only farmer’s markets but also food stores throughout the country. It has been said that only large scale, genetically modified food can feed the growing number of people. It is only logical to argue that corporations know less about the growing of food and there are considerable risks associated with depersonalized food suppliers, one of them being the slow degradation of the very land we need to grow food in the first place.

In the age of corporate agriculture where seed patents are a reality and a company can dictate the way farmers live and operate, most times painfully removed from farm life in the name of profit over people’s health and environmental well-being, we need to go back to understanding growing food from the roots up.

High quality, independent (PR-free) education can provide the pros and cons of such arguments and enough critical thinking should serve as a tool to find the best solution.

We have been witnessing a decrease in the quality of education, and moreover, at a higher level, frequent and shocking abolition of science and the means that support it, be it research labs, libraries, intellectuals whose purpose is to promote knowledge and help it thrive, but who are instead shut down to make room for corporate development that brings profit to a few, but rarely to a community.

By definition, true knowledge should be unencumbered by any financial and political interest. We should employ electoral change to help go back to that. Reinstate the importance of learning, and the need to offer programs that will not stop anyone on the basis of income, reinstating the value of studying hard, knowing that studying is a right, but one that comes with the obligation of excellence.

Excellence is badly needed in addressing various health issues that have been at the centre of many a discussion in the media, from obesity and lifestyle-caused cardiovascular disease, to mental health, addictions, and the lack of quality care for veteran and the elderly. In the age of increasing environmental and lifestyle-related health issues, medical care (hence enough medical doctors of various specialties available in most communities) has to be an election subject, and an important one at that.

As for the environment, well, we’ve been raking up a bad reputation for a while now, our government stubborn enough to stay out of climate change summits. That needs to be addressed and unless people understand why urgent attention is needed, the perception of ill-intended environmentalist who oppose economic development will keep on going, much to the detriment of us all.

We need to educate ourselves and our children that health comes with a healthy environment, which can only be done if we apply knowledge and common sense to the world we live in, understanding that non-renewable energy sources can only take us so far and they come with a price too high to pay (recent storms and the hottest summer on record, plus the rapid melting glaciers as well as the disappearance of many canary-in-a-gold-mine species).

Climate change should have been addressed already and education on the subject will shed light on undeniable true-to-form facts: a thriving green industry provides employability for many and break the vicious circle that holds us dependent to finite, polluting resources.

The needs of a community at large (a country’s needs in fact) are many and diverse, and the task to address them all is gargantuan at best. Which is why we need to ask those in power to address the needs of those who are most at risk if not protected: children with special needs, the elderly, low-income families, and veterans, to name a few.

For all of that and more, we need education. From the first day our children ask why, we need to provide truth and knowledge and that should be enough to help promote integrity and help critical thinking tools develop in each and every one of them so that when it’s time to vote, greater good change will be the first to happen.

Mindfulness – Why I Walk This Path

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On April 28, 2015

In Environment, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement

We walk to the bus in early morning, little boy and I, and I expect shivers. It has been chilly lately. Instead, the air feels warm, though with a touch of crispness.

Little boy plays with the purple marble he found yesterday just outside the school on the way to the library. ‘I like how perfectly round it is, Mama, and that it has something inside. It cannot be just glass…’ I smile and lock the very scene in my memory. Marbles, little boy with long hair shading his eyes from morning sun, squinting and smiling, noises around and the awareness of living that moment as deep as one could. I can hear the morning.

We walk on the bus and I pull ‘The last of the Mohicans’, we have three more chapters to go. My voice reading the story is often sinking under the loud noise of the bus engine but little boy is paying close attention, his head close to mine. I see lilac bushes in people’s yards and I can almost smell them.

We read, approaching the last chapter… The end comes all too soon and unexpected. I read the last words, close the book and look out the window. There is a path that leads to a place I have to go see yet… A wild place in the middle of the city. I peek at little boy and his serious face. We are both silent.

‘That’s a sad ending, Mama.’

Yes it is. I tell him how movies nowadays have a happy ending but that is not an accurate description of life. Life has pockets of happiness, it has pockets of sadness, it has so much that happy ending is almost forgotten in the process of assessing the richness of it all, of every moment that passes by.

purpleflowingWe part ways and I walk home, passing by lilac bushes that smell heavenly, and listening to birds. On my left, a flower bed brims with with yellow and white petals suspended in sunny air. Birds and flowers, the whoosh of the city behind, thoughts of today. Mindfulness. Am I there? To think that I am forever prisoner to the moment would be belittling the experience. Instead, I think of my mindfulness as the pact I made with life a long time ago. To make it all worth it, every moment of it. If I do so, my thoughts of tomorrow, my actions, my words to my sons and my husband, to my friends, they all come from a place I can call my own. The only one I know. My life, the moments that build the path I am on.

I pass by lilacs and thoughts of gratefulness surface. I bring forth thoughts of childhood and so many things I can remember about lilacs. They guarded the steps from the house to the street, draping heavy with rain and sun, seeding today’s thoughts. I was there then, I am here now. A child then, now I have my own. I think of them as I walk uphill. My sons. What will make them grateful along the way? I have to teach them the way. It’s the path I build as I go, learning as I go. From lilac smells that remind me of who I am. Mindfulness.

sunI stoop over a perfect little sun: a dandelion. I like to eat fresh dandelion leaves in spring, I love the yellow umbrellas and will never understand why people call them weeds. At natural food stores you can buy dandelion tea, leaf or root. They are good liver cleansers. helping with detox, the word that buzzes around me nowadays. There is no magic solution. It starts with rethinking dandelions… Mindfulness, reason to never be idle in thought and reasoning.

I continue my speedy walk up the hill on the portion I loathe. It’s dusty and noisy from vehicles too big and engines that roar too loudly. If you drive, you drown the noise in music or news. If you walk like I do nowadays, the sounds are deafening. There is a lilac bush in bloom and I feel sorry for it. The air it draws its life from is dusty and dirty. Its air is mine too. If I walk, I see it. There are wrappers under bushes and the word ‘energy’ from one glares at me. No one wins.

I will soon walk up the last portion of my morning walk. It is quiet here and the city is behind me. I like belonging to a world that challenges me. There is so much to know about belonging in a world that does not comes with rules but with responsibilities. I am not alone. It is quiet and the air is hot, though it is not even 10 am.  Too hot. I think of what ails me, a world that we toast on both sides with incessant wants. We’ve learned to forget, to overlook, to conform. I want to remember, to mind, to speak up, if such is needed. It is, as we raise our children.

How do I think of mindfulness? I think of it as an ability to see details, to be where I am, to know the consequences of my actions on the world around, be it people, my garden, my writing.

If I am mindful, I stand for the truth and I face myself in hope to grow, to understand my world, to live in it, to never just brush and wonder whose life I am living after all.

The day unfolds hot and windy. The radish plants are tiny but bold and today I planted peas too. The boys play, squabble, I munch of thoughts of what is life about anyway and I think to myself that if I keep being in the moment the answer will come. Persistence pays.

sun is...The sunset is a fiery one. Dollops of flames blue and orange and purple engulf the sky and we all stand on the deck and sigh. This is very beautiful.

I am here, seeing the sunset. Truck drive loud and speedy on the road nearby and I resent the noise. Because I want to hear the sunset. For a second, I quit the moment I am in to immerse myself in one where I’d stand to see the sunset that can he heard too.

Then I am back. I am here now. Mindfulness. Today I got to know more.

On Earth Day And Further

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On April 22, 2015

In Environment, Learning, Life Stories, Social issues

AliveIt is Earth Day today – officially, that is – and that means many things: that many people actively think about their world today, that they may feel inspired to make changes that will help heal it and keep it alive, that even though Volkswagen Canada pushed some car-related trend to top trend on Twitter (yes, they did), #EarthDay occupies the second spot, not because of money-inflated campaigns but because people make it so. That is powerful.

Over the last two months I have been observing the effects that two words have on people. Say climate change and some will jump right in the middle of the conversation, while others shift their gaze and sail out of it as it happens with taboos, because that is what climate change often reminds me of. A couple of states in the US have banned the very words, while here in Canada, the very words are spoken with gusto only by those who have no ties with the fossil fuel industry or the seemingly irreplaceable benefits such resources bring to our everyday life.

Everybody knows that dependency is a dirty word that becomes even dirtier when the environment becomes collateral damage. And it does, whether we admit it or not.

The damage, some would say, is already big enough, is it not, while others still argue that perhaps there is no such thing as human activity-induced climate change and what we see is merely normal phenomena of our world.

I will not dwell on the latter. The fact that March was the hottest on record prevents me from it. As we stand now, and we will, likely, for a few more decades at least, there are no additional options when it comes to living quarters, a reality that cannot be twisted in any way even by the most fervent deniers. This is it, our home. The Earth.

What helps then, putting things in perspective? Here’s what changes mine and keeps me motivated to never give up:

ThemChildren, mine included. They deserve better than a declining world. Their minds are eager to learn and their compassion levels run high. If we teach them early, by example, that wants and needs are as different as night and day, and happiness never comes from opening a package or owning yet one more thing, they’ll go after the real thing: connection. With themselves, with people and with the world.

ThereThat all resources on Earth are finite. Matter – that means liquid, gas, solid – transforms constantly and nothing in our world disappears but becomes something else. We have the power (and technology, for most part) to choose processes and resources that improve our world rather than destroy it. Think fossil fuels and pollution versus renewable, non-polluting energy, think plastic and pollution versus reducing consumerism and garbage. Think health versus… Wait, nothing to set that against. True conversation starters indeed.

strengthThat nature is resilient. Which means that silly kids that we are, we have been abusing it for long enough, yet, should we change our ways, things will get better. Slowly, but they will, and that is reason enough.

ThatThat if the environment suffers, we suffer too. No revolutionary medication and treatments can make up for clean water, air and soil and no amount of money can buy a livable world. Ours was and still is good enough so it makes sense to keep it alive. Everything we create (plastic, pesticides, chemicals used for various purposes) stays with us, whether in the same form or a different one. Every action comes with reaction and if we have once accepted that as truth, why not apply it and make our actions positive ones. It only gets better from there onward if we do.

I am stubborn enough to believe that our survival instinct will prevail. It has to.

WorldsHappy Earth Day!

PS: Happy 364 Earth days more until the next April 22 comes around…It is when it becomes an everyday thing that it matters the most.

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