Cav's Place

As many might know, today is Earth Day. Almost makes me wish there would be some sort of event announced around here for the occasion, although I’m just about as shy as you can get and therefore very unlikely to enjoy something like that.
For those looking for such an event, or for a way to honor the day by themselves, you can find some links to get you started here. (Those in the USA might want to check this out as well.) And here you have a nice little guide to “going green”.

I took part in Heart in Action‘s webcast for the occasion last night. Have to admit I wasn’t particularly impressed with it, as it seemed the speakers meant to raise interest and one can assume that anybody participating already is interested and would want more specific details instead.
Disappointed by the number of people participating as well. With Care 2 broadcasting the announcement, I was expecting far more. The site reports over 7 million registered users, but I’m not relying on anything close to that number actually being interested in the subject at hand. I was, however, expecting interest from a significant percentage of the more than 10000 people taking part daily in their Click to Donate races. And apparently they did express that interest, as organizers said more than 1500 people RSVPed, but I didn’t see more than 50 or so in there. One of the organizers said he thought he saw 80 at some point, and let’s even assume people went in and out and go as high as 150 total, that would still be just 10% of those who said they’ll attend, and little over 1% of “racers”.
If people can’t seem to manage to do things that only require them to sit in front of a computer, even after saying they will be there, how can we hope to change the world?

As for Earth Day itself, one day is certainly not enough for anything. If we are to have a chance to undo the damage already done, every day should be Earth Day! But so many refuse to see that…
What can those who do see it do? Keep talking? Does that accomplish anything? Do people still need to be informed? Could a person who hasn’t cared enough to know till now be convinced to actually do something? Or should we just do our parts and hope they add up to enough? Considering how many just don’t care, isn’t that a false hope? And what can you do when you don’t even have the option of deciding how to live your own life?
Questions… Hard questions… Questions that we should think long and hard on. After all, we claim to be an intelligent species, we claim to be homo sapiens. If that is so, why don’t we start acting like it for once?
And you know what the saddest part is? That we might have done enough harm already for the other species we share this world with to still vanish even if we were to go extinct tomorrow…

“It seems to me it ain’t the world that’s so bad, but what we’re doing to it, and all I’m saying is see what a wonderful world it would be if only we’d give it a chance.” (Louis Armstrong)