Welcome to Earth Day, 2008.
I am finding myself not particularly active in it today -- I spent my morning in meetings, and now I have pastoral calls to make. Yes, I am going to drive my car because it'd be late at night before I got home if I rode my bike.
But it's not just one day that we have to try to reduce our impact on the environment. It's not just one day when we remember that God gave us this land to care for not to dominate and exploit.
The sad thing about our current climate instability is that most of it is unnecessary. It's a result of corporate farming, of unchecked industrialization, of conspicuous consumption. We have many things, but we could live a pretty comfortable life without many of them. There's a good chance that we will live without them if our usage doesn't moderate itself soon.
Of course, I'm writing this on a laptop computer as I'm sipping my coffee (grown in Ethiopia and shipped here via polluting ships). Which means that I have a lot of work to do, too. There are so many things I don't even notice myself doing but which add to the degredation of the environment.
So my first step? Just to pay attention. To notice what I'm doing. To think of new ways to do things rather than plod along in the same old way as it makes me and those around me ever unhealthier.
Awareness is a good first step. What will yours be?
