Sam
Simon (television producer, among other things) died in March, but even before
he was gone there was quite a bit written about his philanthropy. One thing
that made me sad was reading that he had pulled back from some of his environmental
support because it didn't have any results.
That
may have been somewhat misconstrued. I have read other quotes about how with
animal charities you can often see immediate results unlike some other good
causes. However, the real reason that it made me sad was that he seemed to be
right.
We
keep doing worse things to the environment and we do it for worse reasons. It
doesn't matter that the fire seasons keep getting worse, or that hurricane
seasons get worse, or that currents shift and sea life dies, we don't change
anything.
I
have said that Black Lives Matter is my priority this year because of the
immediate threat to life. The environment would be the one thing that could
compare. It affects more people, but the death toll isn't always obvious, plus
said death toll is not nearly as high now as it will be. Of course, waiting
until the death toll gets too big to ignore will mean that it will be much
harder to do anything.
For
something unrelated, one of my Twitter friends was complaining about how people
only care about the protests here, and they are ignoring the ones in Lebanon. (She is
half-Lebanese.)
I
actually had seen those protests, and I do care. I am not focusing on it. That
is partly because I believe I can have a bigger impact on the issues in my own
country. It is also because a lot more black people have died at the hands of
police than anyone has died because of the trash not getting picked up in Lebanon. Obviously it is a more
complex issue than that, and it certainly could get bloodier, but for now it is
not going to be my main issue.
If
we had everyone putting energy into making the world a better place, we could
accomplish a lot. Since that is not the case, we have to pick and choose. I
don't turn off my caring, but I don't take on everything. Sometimes the extent
of my involvement is signing a petition. It's almost never giving money since I
never have money. I am finding places to give my time, but there's a limit to
how much of that I have too.
I
don't have much hope for us reversing global warming. I wish I did. It's still
not a reason to give up.
Maybe
you can't reverse all of the trends, but if you can keep fracking from
happening in your area, that is beneficial to the health of your area. Maybe
the hole in Detroit can be cleaned up, or
maybe all that can happen is that the residents still there can be relocated,
but for them it would matter. Cleaning up the output from coal plants would
matter to the people who live around there.
It's
important to look at the big picture, and often things connect. The racial
makeup of Detroit was something that made
it easier to get such heavy pollution in the area. That is a thing that
happens. Having that background knowledge can be useful when you are taking on
the local issue. It can be okay to specialize, and it is often kind of
necessary.
My
family recycles. When we vacation, we find places that we can take our bottles
and papers as much as we can, and often we cart things home with us. Recycling
is good, but reusing and reducing are better. I try to do that. I hope at some
point to be able to afford solar cells.
Those
are minor things, and they will not help much. I don't like that, but I'm not
despairing over it either.
However,
one thing that is quite clear is that the reason we collectively keep making
bad choices is that some people are making high profits on them, and we have
gotten too used to thinking it is necessary because of high cost, when if we
calculated the real cost, we would be making big changes.
So
let's keep corporate greed in mind for next week.
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