New Year: WildernessPunk

I sit for a moment in the airport. Big beer/Small Salad. Pausing, I try to think on what the New Year will bring. What will it mean for me and the rest of the people and animals wiping around the universe on this giant glowing ball of life.

.

.

Sitting within such a crowded place teeming with people tends to make a person humanocentric. I think most of us tend to be this way more often than not. Whether for good or for ill, our lives circle around the importance of our own species. I suppose we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for this, since I’m sure bobcats mostly think about bobcat things, and sharks do their own dance through the depths.

Yet this type of thinking gets us into trouble. On the money-making side of the street…what do the homes of field mice and birds matter if I can convert this stretch of forest into an apartment complex and make 500 grand. “Hey, don’t come down on Mark Moneybags, he’s creating jobs too.”

.

.

I also don’t intend to let liberals of the hook. They make layers and layers of rules and regulations in the hope of perfection through litigation. “Oh, we need to stop bullying and there was that extreme example of Blah so let’s rake everyone through system who does 5% of Blah. We created all these jobs to monitor Blah and even though it isn’t a problem most of the time and is happening less than ever through the entire history of humankind, they have to justify their salary somehow. Guess what, whether those kids were bullied in fourth grade or not, won’t really matter in sixty years when they’re rotting away.

Why search for perfection in a social environment? Because the population is growing so large we’ll all soon be sharing a bed? Why be so selfish your needs trump the needs of the environment and animals. I suppose we all do it, the animals do it too, they just aren’t as good a destroying the world as we are.

.

.

Are you expecting an answer from me? There are a hundred, maybe a thousand answers. There is an issue though. We are all bombarded with all the things we can do to help ourselves and the world. Usually we pick the easiest thing for us and then harp over how big a difference we’re making.

I’m a vegan, so it is okay for me to commute 50 miles five days a week. I’m a bike commuter, so it’s okay for me to eat steak. My new 500,000$ home has an energy efficient dish washer. Well guess what, fuck you, if you even bother mentioning that to me. You can commute by bike to work, be a vegetarian and have a compost pile and still have a negative Earth Balance.

Hey wait, what, did MDG just make up his first new term of 2017? Well yes, I did.

Earth Balance: The balance between the positive impact and the negative damage one commits against the True Environment.

The chances are…you, everyone you know, and possibility everyone you will ever meet will have a negative Earth Balance. It might be possible to have a positive Earth Balance, but even that could be nebulous. How many whales would you have to save to cancel out 10,000 miles of car exhaust? Such things might be a subjective and difficult thing to measure. Perhaps and activist who saves 200,000 acres of forest in Alaska could sit on their laurels and make it to the grave in the positives, but let’s face it, the vast majority of all people in every country take far more than they give.

.

.

An interesting side note, on an individual basis, usually the less money you have the less you pollute.

1. More vehicles = more CO2
2. Buying more food (And Meat) = more waste.
3. More vacations = larger carbon footprint.
4. Better jobs/better housing = Longer Commute
5. More machines = less things done by person/animal power.

Face it, those folks washing their clothes in the stream are kicking your ass.

So how can you increase you positive Earth Balance in the New Year? Is it even really possible? Well first off, of course it is. You could sell everything and start growing crops. You could donate money to the nature conservatory. I’m not telling you to do that, but if you aren’t bed ridden, we all CAN make changes, but if you have a good job and three kids, we need to be realistic, right? No…Yes. Do we?

Remember I’m not trying to tell you I’m perfect, but I am willing to think outside of the death machine. Together it is possible. What we think is impossible can be the possible. What will be your first step to help our wild?

.

.

For a while I’ll remain a very hard man to track down.

.

Light at the end

.

 

You can grab some Skinjumper-Punk here and help support your friendly WildernessPunker

.

.