Living lightly is the best way to save Earth

Love of wild birds and the desire to make life better for them has brought me to think long on the matter of protecting the environment and saving the planet as a place of health and happiness for living things. My careful thinking has led to a knowing of some important truths concerning living on the Earth.

I have come to see that the life of every human being has a significant negative impact on the environment. My life and your life cause pollution that diminishes the quality of air, water and land.

We also cause damages to habitat such as come from mining, logging and agriculture. Considering the large number of people inhabiting the Earth, it is clear that total human impacts are very large, certainly of a magnitude that is seriously reducing the ability of the Earth to sustain the goodness of life.

Knowledge of serious and substantial harm has raised up in my mind and heart a desire to make changes that minimize the negative impacts of human existence. Motivated by this desire, I have looked for what things can be done to reduce impact.

People can transform their consumption of food, material things and energy. We can choose to eat only organic food and eat low on the food chain.

We can choose to eat less than all we want. We can choose to turn away from materialism and fill our lives with environmentally friendly pursuits such as bird-watching and nature writing.

All of us can carefully reduce how much energy we use: driving less, eating less, using fewer electronic devices and appliances, as well as living in smaller houses. We can take action to oppose and stop environment-damaging development projects such as major sources of air pollution, clear cutting of forests and mining.

I like to think of all of these changes as living lightly. The challenge of our times is this, how the people will come to live lightly on the Earth.

Let’s start with environmental education. I believe that an ever-growing corps of volunteer environmental educators can bring the great change of all of us living more lightly and then ever more lightly on the Earth.

The volunteer environmental educators should be welcomed into schools, libraries, local governments and community organizations. Making environmental education a part of each and every substantial part of the community will be a powerful key to bringing the tremendous transformation that is so deeply needed.

I believe that living lightly will succeed in saving the planet. Living lightly will prove to be the most important transformation in the ascent of humankind. We are blessed to have an early part in this wonderful occurrence.

Donald L. Hassig

Colton

The writer is director of Cancer Action NY.