The Children Are the Answer, Also, the Elders

Going green for quite some time

We often hear that Boomers crashed the world. But many Boomers, and many who are just ahead in age of the Boomers, have been trying to alert humanity for quite some time.

Recently, we lost E.O. Wilson. Dr. Wilson proposed that we set aside half of our planet for all the billions and billions of Earth organisms that support life on Earth. The biosphere is not likely without these diverse networks.

Survival on a depleted and ugly Earth may be possible but you would not want it. Wilson, who also invented Sociobiology, and Biophilia, is an ant lover who understood the smallest among us provide all the rest.

We have David Attenborough. Please watch almost any BBC nature documentary over the last four decades. The latest one is on the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs. Chicxulub. He is a treasure and a voice we must hear.

Jane Goodall is the world’s best known primatologist. She also began Roots and Shoots, and reminds us all that we are close cousins to all apes, but also the entire planet shares our DNA and needs our love to be the change.

David Suzuki has been giving us the Nature of Things for sixty years. Watch and learn.

Vandana Shiva supports re-organizing our food production and distribution systems to be more human friendly, soil friendly, and diversity friendly. She is another scientist turned activist with so much to say about providing human rights by noticing sacred Earth rights.

Bill McKibben wrote the End of Nature long before Greta Thunberg was born. She is now carrying on the concerns that he raised — and is still raising — as he continues 350.org.

Paul Watson is a marine biologist and activist that understands you used single-use plastic today, but you can do better tomorrow. He has long fought to save our whales and other marine creatures that make the ocean a vast carbon sink, providing oxygen and life for our pleasure, inspiration, and existence.

Listen to old, and new wisdom

We still have Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter who suggested green energy over toxic fuels. We have Noam Chomsky fighting the good fight. There is Wangari Maathai, who promotes the Green Belt Movement, and won a Nobel prize. Marina Silva fights to protect the Amazon, and indigenous ways. Joanna Macy will inspire you with her psychological insights.

We have had many whose mark is still vital, Rachel Carson, Carl Sagan, John Muir, Albert Einstein, and Henry David Thoreau.

The wisdom of indigenous people for example is exemplified by Lisa Deville, Margaret Redsteer, and Faith Spotted Hawk, to name just a few.

Each of us has a moral obligation to protect our world by fighting for equality and freedom. There are many people fighting for Earth justice just by fighting for a voice, and democracy.

There are also plenty of people who have dedicated their lives as workers, teachers, leaders, gardeners and advocates.

The most important of all, are everyday people who love the world.

If you are not yet one of us, go listen to the wind and birds in the trees — and you will be welcomed by all the Earth.

Very Unpopular Strong Opinions Blog by Christyl Rivers

—

This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

***

—

Photo credit: Shutterstock