My Earth Day Wish

Before you roll your eyes and go, “Oh great, another Earth Day think piece just like all the rest of ’em,” I hope you’ll hear me out.

Make no mistake, I am going to get up on my soap box. Today seems as good a day as any to do it. But I’m not going to take the cliche path of imploring you to plant a tree or pick up some trash. Though, those are always wonderful things to do.

In fact, even though there are loads of things we need to do to protect our planet, I’m not going to ask you to take any action at all. Not right now, anyway. My only ask of you throughout this entire would-be sermon is to stop and think. Because, unfortunately, I feel our society is in need of a mindset shift before we are capable of meaningful change.

You see, we humans have this tendency to take things for granted. In a way, we have to.

We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with calls to action (“buy this,” “support that,” “donate to us,” “sign this petition,” “look at this wild injustice,” “don’t forget to like and subscribe,” “follow for more”). It’s simply not possible to give your attention to every person, company, or cause who is barking at you on a seemingly never-ending basis, even if you want to.

Hell, in our eternally-connected world, this applies to relationships too. At this very moment, I have ongoing conversations with several friends on SnapChat, text message, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger simultaneously. Multiple conversations with the exact same people on numerous apps. I care deeply for my friends, but it’s still overwhelming sometimes and they aren’t even trying to pitch me on anything.

Our brains aren’t capable of consciously processing every bit of information we perceive. Biologically speaking, we have to be able to make certain assumptions about our lives and surroundings to even have a fighting chance at functioning.

So with this bombardment of stimulants relentlessly vying for our attention, I’d argue it’s not fair to expect everyone to be informed or actively searching for solutions to every worthy cause. To a point, I’m quite sympathetic to that.

But our planet and environment is where I draw the line.

Here’s a fact I want you to chew on: Without a healthy planet, none of this matters. Life is meaningless if it fails to exist.

Every problem, every joy, every emotion, every single experience we have in our lives fails to achieve relevance if we can’t live here.

For an increasing number of people, breathable air, drinkable water, and livable climate are no longer assumptions. That’s terrifying. Yet, we largely treat environmental causes like a basic community petition to allow dogs in public parks after 6 p.m. on Saturdays. We can’t afford that.

The assurance that every person on this planet has easy access to the basic building blocks of life is a cause that trumps all others.

Clean air, fresh water, and hospitable climate are shared, finite resources. At some point, if any of these things becomes a problem for one person, it will eventually become a problem for you.

With amazing advances in technology, we have been able to expand the observable universe to distances that couldn’t be traveled in a human lifetime. But we are yet to find a single planet that could support intelligent life like ours does. How lucky are we?

Despite this, we make individual and collective decisions that actively harm the one oasis for human life in any of the galaxies we are aware of.

Even worse, in a country where seemingly everything has the ability to turn into a culture war, environmental issues have become politicized. That’s a damn shame considering Earth Day itself was a bi-partisan initiative. (Remember how nothing else matters if we can’t live here?)

As an active participant in our ecosystem, it is nearly impossible for us to make any decision that doesn’t impact our environment in some way. So why do we meet so many of these choices with such indifference?

I’d posit it’s because the vast majority of us, myself included, typically take our planet for granted. Maybe its because we don’t want to reckon with the true preciousness and fragility that is our very existence. Whatever it is, it needs to change.

So today, my Earth Day wish is that all of you pause and remove yourself from the noise. Take some time to reflect on everything our earth gives you and what, if anything, you are doing to return the favor.

For more on this topic, check out the latest episode of the Nathan Woelfel Outdoors Podcast by using the player below or finding the episode wherever you get your podcasts.