If the right to breathe clean air and grow vegetables not covered in pollutants is higher than the right to drive a car, then we have a powerful path to victory. Our rights to ongoing and sustainable living all over our planet must trump the so-called rights of others to make money or have convenience where the result is an obvious threat to the ecological life-support systems we all share. It's time to be real grown ups about this and find the will to put the future of our children above our own desires and wants.
In an era that needs to tackle pollution, targeted advertising (that in itself is an abuse of personal data) that uses psychological profiling to increase consumerism needs to end. Consumerism and pollution are directly correlated from production, to packaging to transport and disposal. The age of "Buy, buy, buy," needs to give way to a more grown up consideration of planet Earth and the needs of all of her inhabitants - of which humans are only one species.
To the animals, to all of our relatives, to the ones we are so blessed to share our planet with, we give you our hearts for always. We vow to clean your habitats and remake what we have broken or poisoned, for in those actions we poison ourselves and our own hearts. We're sorry, and we're coming back to be a part of the natural world, us and our technology.
The pollution wraps itself around my body like the second skin I neither want nor need. The particles invade my lungs and sting my eyes even if I squint into the city streets. They call it "smog," but truly it is a chemical soup that can only shorten our lives and exacerbate health issues. Some walk in face masks, others hide in homes with air filtration, but most of us can afford neither. We take food where we can get it and sleep fitfully amidst our own coughing. The old tell of a time when the air was so clean that trees and blossoms had a fragrance and the sky was blue like it is in the VR games advertised from all the electronic billboards. That's what happened I guess, the real world got worse every day until the rich made themselves alternative realities instead of cleaning up the city air.
On the land the pollution showed in the decay of the flora, in the water systems the pollution killed everything but the most hardy of algae and bacteria. The air had a rotten, dirty quality everywhere a person could think to go. Humanity could have been angels among the stars, a glorious people on a beautiful home world, yet instead they chose to die in their own filth - every particle of the pollution a product of greed, perhaps the deadliest sin of all.
Mia holds my fingers and sneezes into the city street. The pollution gets to her even before the main rush hour hits, even after the heavy rain of last night. It won't get any better than this today, so we make our move now before she gets the runny eyes and headache to match. It kills me that she'll never know what life was like, how pretty even the cities were. If feels like collectively we gave up years before she was born, so unfair to her and all the children to come. I pull her up into a carry. Exercise is good but not at the expense of taking more toxic particles into her lungs.
The dolphin makes her way through the waters she has known all her life, swimming with the family she loves so dearly. Today there is a new taste to the water, a pollutant, though they have no vocabulary for such things and so she tells her loved ones that the water tastes like "feels bad." They already know but like her they can't understand why. Their eyes sting and there is no option to escape the toxins. They surface, breaking the top to feel cool air instead of the keen sting. The air helps but they cannot stay above the surface indefinitely. While they are topside a tourist boat passes, children and adults alike point excitedly, snapping photographs they will treasure always. The sight of the dolphin pod brings the watchers a joy they find hard to replicate in other ways and they stand mesmerized until the pod moves on. Back under the brine it is as pleasant as swimming in bleach and the babies are becoming distressed. All they can do is swim and pray that in time they will reach water that tastes like "feels good."
The ocean that was blue just yesterday, lapping the golden sands with the cold water of an early spring tide is now more black than the night sky. The surface moves in the slick way oil does with a rainbow sheen that holds no beauty. No longer does the air smell of salt and washed up seaweed; it smells foul and the onshore breeze now carries toxic chemicals that make me wheeze. The birds flop helplessly on the black beach, coated in sticky crude and mostly blinded. I want to run in but I must wait to be dressed in a protective suit, a luxury those creatures don't have. For their health problems they will get nothing, but that's hardly less than the population of this seaside town will get from "big oil." Once they're done ringing their hands and making public statements to the entire planet, our little backwater town will be forgotten. The piece of mind that our coastline brings will be gone, the pollution still in our water, air and land...
Every drop is inconsequential, nothing in the grandness of the ocean. But when they all move together, as one body- therein lies the power. From the surface it may remain tranquil for many days, months even, but it's strength is not gone, merely dormant. Below the surface, no matter how still, are unstoppable currents moving unimaginable volumes of briny water many thousands of kilometres. From above it seems no more alive than a bucket of water, yet below is more life than the skies above or the land it kisses. Truly it is another world, an alien landscape. It is one we should visit with reverence, not use as the toilet bowl and dumping ground of human toxicity.
More fragile than the glass that is blown for the throngs of tourists and just as gaily coloured, the butterfly alights softly on the sooty oil drum. I wonder if its feet are dirty; how would you ever tell? I wonder what it eats here in this city slum; where does it find sweet nectar? Part of me wants to scoop it up but my hands are rough from so many burns and scars. If I killed such a beautiful thing how could I ever live with myself? It makes we wonder if somewhere in the she smog and concrete is a garden hidden behind walls, some oasis of beauty this spark of the creator can find but I cannot.
The homes are clean, the parks pristine, the pollution kept outside the dome. We are told the rest of the planet is a barren wasteland, home only to the chemical pollutants we expel from our bubble. Life carries on much like it always did, only the television has less news to report. The developing nations died from the toxins long ago, curled into fetal contortions of agony, bleeding from the eyes and nose. The dome is blue to mimic the way the sky used to look, the energy pumped in from solar panels above the smog layer. They say the oceans are dead, all life extinct. Our breathable air is now courtesy of the scientists rather than the trees. We act as if we're the superior creatures on earth, what's left of her, yet we're the worst of all. We had all of the advantages, all of the ability to live on a pristine planet of rich natural beauty, but we squandered it chasing material wealth...
We are the frogs in the water, the temperature rising slowly. That's how it is, right? The pollution goes up steadily each year, all the time more waste, more waste. Every ecosystem is in distress yet we continue like children addicted to the sugar of commercialism. The city streets that were once silver-grey are blackened with grime and always there is a feeling of dirtiness. Rain was once a symbol of purity, renewal and growth; now rain is another reason to find shelter lest you feel the acidic drops sting your eyes.
The entrepreneurs were the gods of that time. If you could a make a gadget and sell it for high profit that was all that mattered. The people craved joining the world of the moneyed elite, living in mansions, driving expensive cars and eating in the most exclusive dining establishments. As they made their millions the pollution poured into the water, land and air. It was a madness no-one knew how to halt; chasing money at the expense of our home world was endemic,"insanity" was regarded as outlying beliefs, bizarre to the general mindset. The freaks were the ones who spoke of gardening, caring for mother earth and living more simply. The insane were the ones who heard God calling for the madness to end, to return to systems of healthy living in harmony with all life. And so the future we now live in was set in concrete, a desecrated world instead of the thriving planet we should have inherited as our birth-right. And the real kicker? Money was never real. It was a system of population control, a rigged game to keep the winners winning and the rest in poverty. No wonder they all clamoured for entry, shame they didn't take a few moments to consider the bigger picture.