The World

We are not alone.

 
Its probably no surprise to most of us, but we are actually living on this planet with quite a large number of other people - in fact over 6.6 billion others.  Each of these people has their own brain complete with ideas, motivation, values and desires.  This is great when we think of the benefits of diversity, but it creates difficulties when we want to work together.  While one person is busy working out ways to save the whales, another is still trying to work out new whale recipes.  While one person spends her career trying to develop green transport fuels, another spends hers earning dollars to buy progressively bigger and bigger gas guzzlers.

As humans we are fighting against ourselves almost constantly.  If not in outright war or aggression, then at least in our daily mundane actions.  How can we ever hope to achieve anything that helps our world as a whole? 

Blog Action Day is an effort to bring together bloggers from all over the world to write on one day, about environmental issues that concern us.  When I last checked, there were over 15,000 blogs registered to post about these issues today.  The problem is, that I expect that there will be about 15,000 different angles on environmentalism.  Who will be able to read them all and who will be able to bring them all together.  For a while this disappointed me because I thought of how little would change if 15000 different voices spoke 15000 different messages.  Who would act on it all?  Could anyone possibly gather together all of the different strands and weave a fabric to represent the best path forward for our world?  It seemed like a futile excercise - why should I add my voice to the chaos?

However, I soon realised that all of our environmental problems are caused by individuals.  Whenever a  new power station is built on top of an endangered frog, it is because 1,000,000  individuals demanded more power.  If these individuals didn’t waste so much electricity, then there would be no need for a new generator and so the frogs would survive.  This is the same story with most of our environmental problems.  They are all made up of the actions of a large number of individuals.  If only the individuals knew their strength.

Surely that is the secret to our environmental problems.  When we realise that our actions determine what happens in this world, then we open our hand to see a powerful tool for change.  Instead of feeling helpless to solve the problems, we realise that we are a part of these same problems whether we choose to be or not.  As a young uni student I chained myself under an excavator in a frantic attempt to solve a particular environmental problem.  It took a long while for me to realise that this excavator was simply building a road because individuals like me are obsessed with driving cars.  The more productive action for me would have been to save the time that I used protesting and attending court hearings, and use it to change my contribution to the world. 

That is all I want to write here, to give you more time to read more articles published on Blog Action Day.  Just remember that no matter what you read, it is hardly ever “them” that cause the problem - it is usually “Us”.  And as a member of “Us” you have at least as much power to make a difference by your actions as the next guy.

Note:  I’d also like to thank the organisers of this years Blog Action Day for making this event happen.  It is an amazing effort to get over 15,000 writing about anything on the same day, let alone something as important as our environment.   

Thanks

Tom