How to Reduce Your Environmental Impact
Lydia Miller '21
Step one: freak out.
There comes a time (and that time is now) that everyone must freak out (a healthy amount) about our impending doom.
This collective freak out session can be a sort of call to action.
Now that we have realized that if we don’t make some radical changes everyone and everything is going to die, and the earth will become a desolate wasteland,
We will ponder if humans even deserve to live after being so reckless.
No, that’s morbid.
But… if we don’t take care for the Earth, she will get rid of us and she will be okay.
She will heal and new life will come. Maybe something smarter than humans, who will actually care for her with empathy and decency.
There have already been five mass extinctions in the history of our planet and news flash! We are right smack in the middle of numero six.
What caused the last five?
Asteroids and ice ages probably come to mind.
One thing is for sure, though, it was not humans.
This time it is our fault; that means it is our responsibility to try to stop it.
About 100,000 species go extinct each year.
That is one every five minutes.
FIVE MINUTES!
Think about it, you sit down and watch a YouTube video—in that time, there goes three species, gone forever.
Never to be seen on the face of the earth ever again.
You go sit on the pot—oop! There goes another two!
There is not a minute to lose!
Then Google “environmental impact calculator.”
It would take two earths if everyone lived like you!
Embarrassing.
Then Google “average American environmental impact.”
What the actual… EIGHT AND A HALF EARTHS
Well, at least you aren’t as bad as the average American.
No! That’s no way to think!
There aren't just eight extra earths floating around to redistribute our population amongst.
Your crossover day is July first.
What's a crossover day?
Oh, crap, so we are using resources into the future?
Freak out again.
Calm down.
What can you do?
Drive less. Fly less. Eat fewer animal products. Shop sustainably.
Did that do anything?
Let’s be realistic—not really.
Exon and their big-corp gaggle of greedy friends has been feeding us false ideas that our individual impacts are the main cause of climate change and would actually save the earth.
But it’s not true.
It’s too late for that.
What we can do is put pressure on lawmakers and the corporations themselves to go green and stop screwing the literal planet and everyone and everything in it.
We can do that right? Deep breath.
What’s next?
Think to yourself, is it ethical to have kids?
Then google “antinatalism.”
HAH that’s kind of awesome.
But seriously, is it ethical to have kids? To add to the exponential overpopulation of the planet?
It’s okay, you are only seventeen, you have plenty of time to figure that one out.
Maybe by that time we will have collectively had this “oh, shit” moment as a human race and changed our ways.
Or maybe at that point it will be full blacked-out-sun-raiding-Costco-to-prepare-for-apocalypse-MadMax-style-outfits-corresponding-to-your-role-in-your-little-guerilla-army-this-can’t-be-real-there-have-been-so-many-TV-shows-about-this-the-Book-of-Revelations-Seven-Seals-type-crap! Mayhem! Chaos! Death!
The next step is to check the clock.
Ah… 2:48 a.m.
Try to get some sleep.
Repeat tomorrow.
