elissasmith.ca

I notice lately that all the people I admire are skilled at expressing their ideas, they don’t even have to have mind-blowing, revolutionary ideas- just that they are able to express them.

I wish I was better at verbally and manually expressing my opinions. I just know in my heart that we’re destroying our planet and default our species. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know this. Our forests are being cut down at the rate of 56 million acres a year, that desertification threatens 8 billion acres of land worldwide, that all of the world’s seventeen major fisheries are in decline and stand a decade away from virtual exhaustion, that 26 million tons of topsoil is lost to erosion and pollution every year. Maybe better communication skills will come with time- but there is such a sense of urgency, I feel that we don’t have time.

It so easy to just avert your eyes, it’s even encouraged by the media/government/corporations. The trio provides lots of other things to keep your attention; sports, fashion, movies, the latest music videos, wedge political issues… while they go about making their billions. I understand why people choose to look the other way, I sure want to sometimes. I think we all know deep down what’s going on- even the land-rover-driving-capitalist-pigs. We’re all just in various states of denial. Actually I know someone who is currently writing a book on this topic- George Marshal. I can’t wait to read it once he is done.

Before I didn’t really have a reason for our behaviour. I’ve only come to understand lately, that the reason we’re destroying our planet is because using the planets resources in a short period of time makes 350 residents of earth the billionaires, and 3 million millionaires. Their total net worth is estimated to exceed that of 45 per cent of the world’s population. They have all the power to use up the earth’s resources, market it to us as useful, create pollution and waste, and increase the enormous inequalities within and between all nations of the world. I worry that maybe I’m just pointing all the blame on someone because its easy.

Here is a really cute photo of my cousins on the Feagan side of my family swarming my grandmother on her 80th birthday.