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Cut down on traffic, pollution, expanding roadways by offering more remote work options. Work from home if you're just mostly on a computer or telephone all day.
Stop the use of ALL plastic bags in stores, stop putting water into plastic bottles, and put milk back into glass jugs. Go back to using paper bags or reusable, and only buy water out of large recyclable glass jugs (if you absolutely can't drink the water out of your tap)
The use of plastic is truly necessary in some fields (medical), but landfill sites are overflowing with plastic bags and bottles. I don't think the recycle plants can keep up with them.
More environmental education and learning to think critically is needed. Doing something is great, but understanding why you are doing it is essential. The definition of critical thinking is: ... the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe. It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. Someone with critical thinking skills is able to do the following : understand the logical connections between ideas.
I signed up for a 10 week continuing ed course called Endless Oceans at a local aquarium/research center. The inter-connectivity between everything is astounding and this is after just three classes. I thought I was aware and knowledgeable about environmental issues, but this course is making it clear how much I don’t know and have to learn yet. More importantly I’m learning how to interpret all the vast amount of available information more critically.
More environmental education and learning to think critically is needed. Doing something is great, but understanding why you are doing it is essential. The definition of critical thinking is: ... the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe. It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. Someone with critical thinking skills is able to do the following : understand the logical connections between ideas.
I signed up for a 10 week continuing ed course called Endless Oceans at a local aquarium/research center. The inter-connectivity between everything is astounding and this is after just three classes. I thought I was aware and knowledgeable about environmental issues, but this course is making it clear how much I don’t know and have to learn yet. More importantly I’m learning how to interpret all the vast amount of available information more critically.
That kind of learning also deepens your ties to the area, so it is an emotional and spiritual broadening as well as intellectual. Kudos to you for taking the step of keeping your mind open and engaged.
Treat all lands as sacred. The most important places to protect in the next 100 years, in my opinion, are the most degraded lands.
Chernobyl is a wildlife sanctuary, in effect. So is Rocky Mountain Arsenal, outside Denver. If contamination is so bad that people leave, wildlife thrives.
We have no place to put nuclear waste. We can anticipate that many fossil fuel sites, refineries and so on, will close as the world moves towards renewable energy. Hang "Wildlife Sanctuary" signs at the gates of all those places when they close. Keep people out if necessary. The animals will come back. It's not as bad as it sounds. If you're a songbird, with a three-year life span, you are less likely to contract cancer than a person who lives on a contaminated site 70 years. Ideally, the sites would be cleaned up and preserved. It's likely most won't ever be cleaned up.
New England was once completely cut over. It's why stone walls run through the woods. It was all farmland. People left farms during the industrial revolution, and the woods came back. The Yucatan peninsula was once dry, brown, and dusty. The Mayans abandoned cities because of deforestation and drought. Now those abandoned cities are covered with jungle inhabited by jaguars and monkeys. Nature comes back.
I discount pristine wild places not because they're not important, but because many, many people are already concerned with them. The real turf battle, in my opinion, is being fought in the ugly, damaged places. Environmentalists go, "Ew," and look away. That kind of land can be bought up cheap, I'll bet, in many cases. Let's look there.
So many of the responses on this thread are the reflex regurgitations of the uninformed.
If you really want to help, buy acreage and maintain/restore it. Fragmentation of contiguous habitat range is as bad as degradation of habitat.
The minor injuries caused by Man's pollution, "plastic" and fossil fuel use are easily tolerated by Mother Nature if we still allow her space enough to carry on.
BTW_ there is no "over-population problem." Allowing 8 sq ft/person, there's room enough in Lake Superior for 12 Billion people to all tread water at the same time. We produce enough food every yr to feed everyone and still waste 40% of the food. Water covers 70% of the planet and we know how to desalinize it cheaply. I'm still waiting for someone to document a natural resource that we're in danger of depleting in the next 500 yrs.
So many of the responses on this thread are the reflex regurgitations of the uninformed.
If you really want to help, buy acreage and maintain/restore it. Fragmentation of contiguous habitat range is as bad as degradation of habitat.
The minor injuries caused by Man's pollution, "plastic" and fossil fuel use are easily tolerated by Mother Nature if we still allow her space enough to carry on.
BTW_ there is no "over-population problem." Allowing 8 sq ft/person, there's room enough in Lake Superior for 12 Billion people to all tread water at the same time. We produce enough food every yr to feed everyone and still waste 40% of the food. Water covers 70% of the planet and we know how to desalinize it cheaply. I'm still waiting for someone to document a natural resource that we're in danger of depleting in the next 500 yrs.
Who do you think you are calling us names?
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