POWER IN NUMBERS

Today was a complete joy for me. I got to do my daily trash pick up WITH someone rather than people just watching me do it by myself and not helping. A friend from Oahu who is a HUGE Earth lover (YAY!), was over here with her husband for spring break and she had written and said they wanted to clean a beach with me! Do you have any idea how happy that made me? YES! So today I got to take them to my beloved Larsens. Even though the cutting has begun to make the land above into cattle pasture, it still is an AMAZING place, and I still am holding hope that the rancher will be stopped and the wilderness will grow back. Dreams are powerful. For hours we walked the sand and talked and picked up trash from this morning's high tide, and then we got GIFTS! Two of my "regular" seals were at the next beach up, the Albatross were dancing together, several turtles came by to say hello, and some gorgeous shells had washed up. Nature gives us love even as we dump on her. But you know what? Today there are 3 less bags of trash floating around in the ocean's magnificence. I wonder how much is dumped in her every day and how much is removed every day. I know that more is dumped than is removed, but I'd like to see that change.

Last week I was on Oahu visiting my parents and spent the afternoon with one of my best friends at a beach there. We began picking up trash and in a very short period of time filled a huge garbage liner bag with each of us hauling extra large items that wouldn't fit in the bag. One afternoon, at one beach, on one island. And of all the people there that day "using" the beach, no-one else was picking up trash. How can people look at it and NOT want to help the ocean? It seems so obvious to me that it does not belong to the Earth but to us humans, and we must be the ones to clean up our own mess because the ocean can't clean it up for us. But day after day that is not what I see. I see people just ignoring it. WHY?????? What has happened to people's hearts so that they are not moved to help?

I just read an article on how the number one pollutant on Earth is plastic. And Dave Chameides wrote a blog on Care2.com (go read his blogs!) about how many plastic bags are used EACH DAY. There is a ticker on the blog that is turning over new numbers as you watch, showing the bags being used every minute, and the numbers move so fast you can't even track with them. Plastic bags used and thrown just in the U.S.: 1 million per minute!!!! WOW. So how many of you used a plastic bag today? Were you part of that 1,440,000,000 in just one day? And the number 2 pollutant? Cigarette butts. For those of you who smoke, do you know what is in the butts you throw out? The part that is smoked is of course tobacco and paper, which also has chemicals and pesticides. But guess how many ingredients are in the butts. (this little guessing thing never works because I can't wait while you guess!) 596. Are you kidding? NO. How do they even pack that many in that little thing? Here are just a few of the more toxic ingredients that go into the soil or the water depending on where the butts land when people throw them: Arsenic, Acetone, Lead, Formaldehyde, Toluene, Butane, Cadmium, Ammonia, Benzene. YIKES! Why are these things even in there? Someone must have thought it was a good idea. If you want to read more about it google "ingredients in cigarette butts". And how many of these butts are in our water or soil? 10 MILLION are purchased EVERY DAY!!!!!!! 10 million. One day. Numbers that big just seem impossible to comprehend. But it starts with each person each day making a choice to help or to harm. Do you want to be part of the 10 million?

Here is a great quote by Rolf Halden: "good for a minute and contaminating for 10,000 years.” That one minute of convenience with a plastic bag, or pleasure with a cigarette is not worth poisoning the Earth for thousands of years. I don't know anyone who would say that those things are worth it. But what we say and what we do are different. Isn't it time to bring those into alignment? What about one million pieces of trash picked up per minute! I'd like to see a ticker running for that.

It's time to change these numbers. It's time to make our words match our actions. If we say we don't want to poison the Earth, then stop doing it. Years ago we didn't know how damaging plastic was or how poisonous cigarettes are. Now we do. So do we act accordingly? Or do we just keep doing what we did because change feels too hard? I vote for number one. There is power in numbers, and yes each person DOES matter because you are part of a larger number that is helping or harming. Right now the numbers are higher for those doing harm than for those helping. Which number will your name be added to? Thanks for listening.

RAZING PARADISE

My dear readers, I have been absent from these pages for a long time because I have been heartbroken and stunned. All of my writing lately has been to government officials and land owners, lawyers and fellow Earth lovers. My favorite wilderness in the world is being altered in a horrific way, and it seems none of the people who could be stopping this are going to. But I MUST believe that this is not how the story ends. There must be a light in here somewhere, not just for this place that is so sacred, but for all the sacred places around the world that are being razed. I am reading all the time about ancient forests being destroyed and the people who live in them are either displaced or killed. It seems so far away and hard to grasp, that humanity can treat the Earth and each other in this way. While I don't physically live in this forest that is being cut down, my spirit does. I feel this in my soul. I have read about aboriginal people being so connected to the land that they suffer as it does. Apparently I am a blond, blue-eyed Hawaiian, connected to this land.

Way back in the fall I wrote a blog called Saving Larsens, about how a cattle rancher wants to cut down the forest above the beach and make it cattle pasture all the way down the hill to the sand. Amazingly, he GOT the permit, issued by the government agency that oversees the "conservation land" it is on. CONSERVATION. What part of that word calls for cutting down native plants and smothering the reef in cattle dung? I just don't get it. There have been so many passionate appeals made, and not just by people like me who love the place. Actual authorities in the field. The government aquatic biologist for this island declared the reef to be the most pristine on the island, and stated his opposition to the cattle pasture in the conservation district. They even ignored him, and he works for the SAME AGENCY that issued the permit. How have we arrived in a place in the world where the agencies that are being paid to protect what is left of Nature are making decisions to destroy her instead? There are now 2 lawsuits filed to protect this place, against the agency whose job it is to protect it!!!!!! They need to be sued to do their job???? What a bizarre state we have created in our society.

So aside from laying my body across a tree that is about to be cut, writing letters and making phone calls to every one who might be able to do something, and getting involved with the lawsuit, what else can I do? Pray. I am. And raise awareness about what is happening all over the world to the last places that have not yet been destroyed by humanity. There are so few left. For people living in cities or even rural farmland, the plight of forests and reefs is not something they see with their own eyes, and I don't think they realize how it will affect them if they do nothing. It must somehow be felt in the heart, in order to care enough to do something to help save a place you have never seen. You must FEEL how important it is to retain what wilderness is left in the world, and REALIZE how you affect those places even if you live thousands of miles away. All of our lives are interconnected now with the last remaining forests and reefs on the Earth. If the last of them are cut down and the last reefs die, then we will feel it because we won't be able to BREATHE. Literally. No more oxygen. THEN we will all suddenly want to do something to save them, because we will finally realize we are in fact saving ourselves. And it is too late. We need to realize this NOW. We need to stop razing the forests NOW. We need to stop destroying reefs NOW. EVERY choice we make in our days is a vote to either save or destroy what is left. Treat it as sacred, or disposable. PLEASE don't wait. When you go to Starbucks, when you use shampoo, when you buy toilet paper, it ALL makes a difference. Make your decisions to help save the Earth every day as if YOUR life depends on it. It does. And if you hear about a forest being cut down or a reef being destroyed, DO something, no matter how far away you live.
Thanks for listening, and acting.