Our Planet

[Janice L Parks]

Ya know ya hear about how bad off the planet is every day on tv, but it really hit home for me when I watched the special Planet Earth on Discovery channel. There are so many beautiful birds and animals that are in danger. Diane Sawyer showed a bird on her special that can memic a car alarm and a chain saw. They talked about the drought in Australia. I had no idea how desperate it is. I know there is not a lot I can do about it, but if each one of us does one little thing it will help. We are down in the lower part of Texas right now and there are 2 kinds of wild parrots down here. One is called a Red Head which is green on the body and red on his head. Also there are small green one's that are like the Monk Parketts. It's so exciting.

[kyria]

Its only as much as we can do right now but;

We are big on grey water systems in our home, always have been, we also have a garden tank for watering the garden even though we do not need one, we run our washing machine water out onto the garden, we recycle everything we possibly can, we have a compost heap and grow our own fruit and vegi's where possible, i have an amazing herb garden and we companion plant. We use energy saving light bulbs and special shower heads.

This is what we are doing right now to save water and resources, but its the big companies that need to get into gear to stop emitting and creating harmful things that are destroying the ozone and causing havock with the green house gases.

Australia is in a really bad way, and right now the only other thing I can do is pray.

[Lauren]

People like us are doing out bit. Its the government and big companies that don't care and I think that was evident in something a certain politician said recently. It made me so angry. Economy more important than the environment? Hmm, makes you wonder whos really running the country.
We should be recycling water, we should be converting out cars from petrol, we should be finding an alternative to alot of things. And I think it needs to be done in a cheaper way so that average people can afford to save the planet too. But do you think our governments would step up? I think not. They should of thought about all this 10 years ago. We might not have ran out of water so fast.
It makes me angry and sad to watch our world die. I think my children won't be living in the same world as today. I wonder how bad it will get. Weather has already changed dramatically. Summer are longer and hotter now and it barely rains anymore. How much more will it change. I don't think anyone knows. I think the animals feel it more.

[Janice L Parks]

I think you are right about the animals feeling it. I get really mad when they show all the cars that run off batteries. How many years will it be before the average person can afford one. Where we are in Texas is like 30 miles from the Mexican border towns. Most of those poor people are still driving cars from the 60's. Here in Texas we have to pay $20.00 a year to have our cars inspected, but there are cars every where that smoke like crazy. If they are going to pass laws why don't they enforce them. Our summers are getting hotter also. The place we use to live up in north Texas has been in a 3 year drought. They finally got some good rain, but I don't think it is enough to get them through the hot summer. Like you said all we can do is pray like crazy. I have twin nieces that are 8 and I can't even imagine what their world will be like in 50 years.

[CatsChair]

The really scary thing is that we WERE thinking about these things years ago. I was a tree-hugger back in the sixties, but we have forgotten so many things that we learned.

One silver lining though..... we did get rid of DDT & the pelicans are back -- anybody else remember "Silent Spring"? If it was before your time, it is worth a read.