Colby Wishes You a Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day! Below is my Earth Day note, a kind of “I Wish People Knew” meme I’m sharing today. Please see below.  Inspired by a brilliant and inspirational Kyle Schwartz writing assignment for her students: “I Wish My Teacher Knew.” http://www.syracuse.com/us-news/index.ssf/2015/04/i_wish_my_teacher_knew_denver_student_notes.html  This breaks open some walls for insight, simple and elegant. 

I hope the world starts polluting less.

I hope we can start using less water in California.

I hope conservative Republicans who own coalfields and oilfields can somehow admit climate change is manmade and real.

A 97% consensus among climate scientists confirming this is a ridiculously high consensus in any scientific field.

I hope people stop eating as much meat.

One acre of Amazon rain forest is cleared every second for raising cattle. http://www.cowspiracy.com/ Digital download only $1 on or after Earth Day.

I hope the next-generation figures out clever ways to get CO2 out of the atmosphere.

I hope the next-generation figures out clever ways to re-forest land and desalinate water without using a lot of fossil fuels and energy.

I hope kids everywhere get to play and worship religion or not without the fear of being targeted and marginalized.

I wish all religions would teach peace and tolerance first.

I want to learn more about all the world's religions and find more about what I like about the human nature and our spirit in each of them.

I hope there's less violence in video games and TV in the future.

I don't watch a lot of violent TV and movies, and I haven't for a while.

I think it's better to provide constructive entertainment and hobbies for people and to be active rather than to be passive and voyeuristic of socially negative behavior.  http://colbyallerton.blogspot.com/2012/12/hollywood-responds-to-deadly-conn.html

I wish more people would mature out of being petty and juvenile (i.e., blog replies, etc.) in their responses rather than embracing what's possibly good when happening upon new information.

Gwyneth Paltrow trying to live on food stamps for a week has created a broader conversation and consideration about how difficult that is.

But many have chosen to ridicule her for hypocrisy.

Read this woman's story about food stamps and try not having compassion.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/simchafisher/2015/04/17/the-day-i-bought-steak-with-my-food-stamps/

I think the knee-jerk reaction of wanting to immediately denigrate things outside oneself is not constructive.

I wish people in California would watch my 2-minute water valve video to easily save water in their homes. http://colbyallerton.blogspot.com/2015/04/save-water-turn-down-supply-valves.html

I wish people would all consider an electric car next time they need to purchase a car.  

A Chevy Volt driven mostly in the city can get 160 miles to the gallon (being driven just on electric batteries most of the time, up to 40 miles a trip). Many days they never burn a drop of oil.

I wish it was state law that all new homes have solar panels included in their construction.

The Keystone pipeline could actually transport water from flooded areas in the Northeast and Canada saving millions of dollars and floods and insurance damage and bring that water to the drying south and the west.

I think and others think that bringing water into these areas that need it is more important then taking out extremely difficult to extract and destructive polluting fossil fuel reserves and trudging that across our country creating spills and more of a market for an obsolete power source. I wish many things.

I wish people knew some say clean energy is already winning. That it’s a battle against entrenched greed but that we can economically save the planet’s ecosystems (and hopefully coastal cities, and many/most species, etc.). http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-08/clean-energy-revolution-is-way-ahead-of-schedule

I wish it's a good day for most people on the earth.

And better days for them ahead.

Colby