It’s Earth Week, and with lots of attention directed at ways to be kind to the planet, many people often stop and ask themselves “that’s all fine and good but why should I really go green?” Personally, I think it’s a very valid question.
In the interest of time and space, I’m going to keep this brief. In my opinion, there are essentially three reasons to adopt a more sustainable ‘green’ lifestyle.
- Resources
- Health
- Money
Resources:
Looking at things from a holistic perspective, it’s pretty simple. We have one planet – just one. And Earth, as we call home, has a finite amount of resources such as water, minerals, land, etc. Yet, since 1960, our world population has doubled to roughly 7 billion people. The United States, while not quite keeping up pace with the overall population explosion, has increased its population by 70% over the same time period.
Given that we have a finite amount of resources, we can safely say we now have ½ of the world’s resources per capita compared to 50 years ago. That’s not taking into account that we are consuming those finite resources at record speed. That said it’s safe to say sometime soon, our population will outpace our consumption of natural resources leading to an even faster rate of consumption. There’s no doubt about it – we’re going to run out.
The point? Our resources are not endless. At some point, this WILL affect your children or your grandchildren.
Take away: It makes sense to conserve the resources we do have in order to stretch out their availability for as long as humanly possible while we explore and develop alternative sources.
I’m in the middle of reading Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I’ve enjoyed many of Barbara’s books over the years and find myself engrossed in this one. If you’re a foodie, care where your food comes from and have a hankering to grow your own veggies, this is the book for you. If you don’t, well you should read it anyway. It’s really that good.
