Future Generations: Sorry Prince Ea | Stand for Trees | Severn Suzuki | Anjali Appadurai

I just came across these messages which echo in their empathy for the inhabitants of the earth affected by their environment and for the habitat loss of species; it’s about what we can and must do to actively engage in changes.

Dear Future Generations: Sorry Prince Ea

Prince Ea describes what a future generation may come across, when the Amazon Rain Forest becomes the Amazon desert…or when a tree is a thing of the past, yet stops himself to beckon the audience that it is not too late.

He urges to “look at the root, not at the branches of government…..we must globally warm our hearts….If we don’t all work together to save the environment, we will be equally extinct.”

Dear Future Generations: Sorry Prince Ea. If we do nothing, regardless of racism, sexism, inequality… we will be Equally Extinct

Prince Ea says he was inspired to write this piece after visiting Africa and witnessing the destruction of the rain forest, where animals are losing their habitat at enormous rates.

And with reference to sorry doesn’t cut it, because we still have a chance to act; he brings up Stand For Trees, what he has chosen as an action to offset carbon.

Every time you buy a Stand For Trees Certificate, you help local forest communities around the world keep a specific forest standing and prevent a tonne of CO2 from entering the earth’s atmosphere.

Stand for Trees certificate

Stand for Trees How it Works You Buy a Stand for Trees Certificate – offsetting a ‘tonne’ of CO2 – allowing forest to stand

This will naturally help communities living within these local forests to protect and honor their trees and want to maintain the forest as well as maintaining the corridor of land for all the species whose habitat is within these forests.

I came across the speeches of two young girls who had the courage to extend their voice to adults meeting in two separate climate summit events.

One features the Words of Wisdom of the 12 year old girl at the time of here speech in 1992, uploaded April, 2008 onto youtube.

Severn Suzuki in Rio De Janeiro Earth Summit 1992

Severn Suzuki was the ‘girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes‘.

I am only a child, and yet I know, that if all of the money that is spent on war, was instead spent on environmental policies, Severne Suzuki girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes. She claimed that her father informed her, “You are not what you say, you are what you do.” She was speaking at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 1992 – United Nation’s Conference on Environment and Development (1992)

Severn said that her father informed her, “You are not what you say, you are what you do.” Investigating, I found that her father is certainly saying and doing things to inspire us. https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/sustainability-david-suzuki-creative-consciousness-same-name-but-different/

At that time, Severn Suzuki was speaking for (ECO) The Environmental Children’s Organization – which she and several 12 and 13 year old friends started to engage with the world to make a difference. She came 5,000 miles from British Columbia to Rio to tell adults how their actions were causing her to lose her future. “I am only a child, and yet I know, that if all of the money that is spent on war, was instead spent on environmental policies.”

Severn Suzuki speaking at Earth Summit Rio 1992 if all the money spend on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental solutions.

Severn Suzuki grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In her speech she said, “In my country we make so much waste, we buy and throw away, buy and throw away, and yet northern countries will not share with the needy. Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to lose some of our wealth, afraid to share…

If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!”

Here is the full text of Severn Suzuki’s speech at the Earth Summit Conference in Rio, 1992.

She is since married with two children, intent still in making a difference through her education and activism. Think Global Green, listing Facts and Solutions about the environment.

19 years later, another young articulate and bold young woman spoke to a different climate conference, this time the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa in 2011. As a representative of the College of the Atlantic representing the Youth Delegation, Anjali Appadurai urged the dignitaries attending the UN summit for climate justice, demanding them to “Get It Done”!

Anjali Appadurai, representing the Youth Delegation of the College of the Atlantic speaking to United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa 2011, covered by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz ~ As an avid blogger who is presently picking up where I left off with my eBook to complete it and and beginning again to compose music, I ask you rather unambiguously and unabashedly to please donate, if you are able. !-))

Carol Keiter the blogger with Tibetan prayer flags, Native American dream catchers and green plants

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Obama pledges to combat poaching elephants | If humans are so smart, why do we act so stupidly?

Or shall I say, why do human beings act so irreverently towards the earth and the creatures with whom we share our planet? I’ve written in a former blog about the plight of elephants and rhinoceros due to poaching https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/battle-for-the-elephants-documentary-speaks-louder-than-words/

Elephants in Africa

You can read World Wildlife Fund’s article about Obama’s pledge to fight against wildlife crime.
http://worldwildlife.org/stories/obama-pledges-support-to-stop-wildlife-crime-in-africa?utm_source=wildwire&utm_medium=email&utm_content=july2013&utm_campaign=wildlife-trade

I’m honored that Obama has shown his concern and taken action to defend the rights of other species with whom we share this planet. He recognizes the delicate process required to affect change. It’s an integrated system that has to be dismantled. The actual poachers have a quasi militaristic/mafia type organization with sophisticated weapons and transport. Barack Obama as well as Hillary Clinton and others realize that not only does money need to be infused into local economies to combat this problem, but also education. The way to counter this criminal warfare against elephants and other species which inhabit this earth, is to withdraw the incentive; use money and programs to leverage against the poaching operations. Since the indigenous inhabitants of areas of Africa where this poaching exists are lured because of its financial rewards, the people need to be educated about the true worth of these creatures (as opposed to ivory torn from a dead elephant) and enticed with incentives to no longer have interest in poaching. For example, if programs would become available to guide people into ways of conserving water, land, reveal alternative types of farming, growing, building, and display renewable ways of generating energy, etc. and showing the true benefits and appreciation of real ‘live’ elephants (i.e. their uniqueness and intelligence) the people would no longer feel the need or desire to engage in this trade that destroys their treasures. By creating means for local people to help themselves and learn techniques to live more prosperously and harmoniously in their environment, they will be less inclined to ‘sell out’. Certainly part of this investment Obama pledges will also need to go into educating people on the ‘buyers’ end, who want ivory for various reasons. Though the demand for ivory carved for ornamentation or for alleged cures may be ingrained in generations (or over millennia) of people in China and other parts of Asia, the world is a different place now. Our world suffers from over population for one thing. And in this post industrial era, desires of the past need to be reassessed. It is no longer okay to plow through acres of forests, wetlands, to dump toxins into water supplies, or to act in any other careless ways that obviously damage or obliterate pristine environments, just because there may be profit in it for someone. Whereas somehow actions such as these were overlooked or tolerated when the earth seemed to offer an endless supply of abundance of everything, we now know that this is far from the truth.

As our technological advancements have increased our knowledge of the world and extended our reach to every corner of the globe, we have effectively shrunken our world to within reach of a click. Many of the things that we produce to make our lives easier and more convenient have made a dramatically negative impact on our environment. We can no longer blindly pretend that our actions don’t have consequences; drilling for oil, fracking, dredging, coal mining all affect the delicate balance within the ecosystems where these procedures happen. Our production of tools and toys have repercussions affecting everything around us; i.e. superfund sites (designated toxic waste areas) speckle the areas where high tech production of computers and electronic gadgets takes place. Many of these are out of sight, yet can’t be ignored; we can’t discount the consequences that affect air and water quality, environmental health, the dramatic increase in extreme weather (storms, draughts, fires) and the physical and mental health of human beings. We have continued to scourge the earth in the last 60 years. Despite all of our sophisticated high-tech gadgets, the human condition is dramatically out of balance and morally bankrupt. Our emotional and psychological insights haven’t evolved in the same exponentially rapid pace as our technological knowledge. Smart devices have outsmarted human relations. We have machines that talk to us, and yet neighboring countries or rivaling ethnic groups still haven’t mastered the ability to talk through their feuds. Yet what is more savage than warfare against our fellow humans, is the fact that our modern luxuries and expectations coupled with overpopulation and negligence towards other species, means that in the not so distant future, the plethora of creatures who inhabit this earth, of which we are the guardians, will be gone. Massive extinction precipitated by ignorance, greed, short-sidedness and a complete lack of reverence for life. It will no doubt ultimately precipitate the decimation of our own species, by playing too recklessly with the delicate balance of our ecosystem.

Ironically, it is primarily modern ‘civilized’ man of the ‘developed world’ who is responsible for so dramatically destroying the health of our planet and annihilating an alarming number of creatures. There is something glaringly uncivilized about the way in which we have continued on this path of environmental destruction and species irradiation, without having empathy for our fellow man and fellow inhabitants of this planet. As one observes the hierarchy of predators and prey in all species, nature reveals that it is the strong that survive. My question is, if we human beings are so intelligent, with our abstract thinking and rational thought, what has gone so glaringly wrong? Perhaps there’s something very lopsided and obviously missing, when merely measuring the standard IQ, intelligence quotient. We have been fatally disregarding emotional intelligence (EQ) in this equation, and for that matter, an empathetic quotient. It seems to be pretty clear that actions strictly driven by economic motives and consuming, is where we continually go wrong. We need to make more ‘conscious’ assessments about how each of our thoughts and actions affect and ripple throughout our entire environment. Considering that this incredibly beautiful planet with its inextricably interwoven life forms is our only home, to not act responsibly is criminal. If human beings are so ‘gifted’ and the most intelligent species, why have we done more damage to all of life than any other species? What is missing, that we have been so tragically unconscious and acted so unconscionably towards the miraculous ‘gift’ of life? “Don’t destroy what you can’t create.”