It’s All About Love

Today is Earth Day.

On this day as much as I love the trees, the birds, the sea creatures, the rivers, all the animal and plants; I want this day to be about people.

People who cut down trees in the Amazon because their children are starving. People who overfish our seas because they have been fishermen for generations and cannot compete with the big trawling companies. People who work in factories producing goods made from plastic that break after two weeks and end up in landfill. People who work in the same factory that spews industrial waste into rivers. People who send their children to work in sweat shops for less money in a week than what it would cost us in one day for coffee. People who shoot endangered animals for their fur, or their tusks. People who are just trying to survive on this earth that is theirs as much as it is ours.

I am angry for those people because much of the time they are demonised, blamed, maligned for destroying ecosystems, being polluters; but they are pawns at the hands of the multinationals who don’t care how much of the earth they destroy or how many people they destroy along with it as long as their profits are up.

I am angry at governments who, regardless of their orientation – left wing, right wing, somewhere-in-the-middle-wing – do nothing to stand up to these multinational companies who continue to do as they please. We all know why the world is in the state it’s in – it’s the unequal distribution of wealth and power. Until that changes what chance do we really have of saving the earth?

I know an organic farmer who has a farm two hours south of Sydney who grows the most fabulous produce but can barely scrape together a living due to supermarkets screwing him hard for the cheapest price possible on his produce and then turning around at the last minute and saying they decided to import their oranges from South America instead.

That same farmer is watching as his fellow farmers are bullied and pushed off their land by big agricultural companies planting genetically modified crops that will probably damage the ecosystem irreversibly. What does the government do about it? Nothing.

Yesterday I saw a news article about diamond miners in Zimbabwe who have been sacked from the mines because the government has taken it over. I guess they were lucky to get away with their lives because many of their co-workers were shot or ripped apart by dogs. Now those former blood diamond miners are panning for gold, which is one of the most environmentally damaging things you can do, but they are starving. What choice do they have?

I love the earth. I want it to last in a healthy state for as long as it can. But I love people too. The everyday, ordinary person just like me. I want them to have as good as life as they can. So on this day where we remember to care for our planet, I want to say Save The People Too.

Earth Day. It’s all about love. It’s what the world needs. It’s the only thing that there’s far too little of.

Save the planet

Save the people too