A serious case of nausea came over me one day last year during a tour stop for my American Red Cross fundraising initiative. I knew that eating would likely solve the problem but it had to wait because completing the five hours I planned to be outdoors, talking to strangers about movies and disaster relief, took precedence over all else.
Soon, I went from standing next to a DVD stand to sitting on one of the blocks in a parking lot next to my vending spot, taking lots of slow in-and-out breaths to prevent myself from vomiting all over the sidewalk. Inches from me lay the very curb on which people spit out mucus and saliva, throw their garbage of empty food containers, urinate and who knows what else. Yet, there I was – lightheaded, sick and trying to gather myself to continue on with my day.
Obviously when you’re in your own state of discomfort, there is less concern about how nasty the surroundings are, and more concern about what it’s going to take for you to get right, really fast. Still, that does not mean we as a human race couldn’t stand to do better at caring for the environment – for it affects how well, and how quickly, we can recover from emergencies. Spike Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts is a great example of how every man, woman and child living on the earth has a responsibility in treating it with the respect and care it deserves because there’s no telling when the time comes when you’ll find yourself shitting where you eat; in emergency situations that could have been prevented.
"When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," a Spike Lee Film.Even the most basic of things such as not littering are among the many important wake-up calls anyone can gather from a movie like When the Levees Broke.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of New Orleans residents were surrounded by water they couldn’t drink, soil they wouldn’t grow food on, air that carried some of the foulest odors that no sane person would enjoy breathing in and heat and humid temperatures that made it all more difficult to bear. One can only imagine how much of the environmental challenges that surface when disastrous events occur were the result of --and exacerbated by -- everyday, senseless actions of man.
Western society produces volumes of unnecessary waste and far too many people don’t even think twice about it. We’re quick to trash something than we are to recycle it. We contribute to the economic growth of entire industries that are artificial materials. We disrupt forest land and natural animal habitats to manufacture buildings, highways and other forms of infrastructure rather than restore or rebuild the loads of abandoned ones that are crumbling as they sit. We don’t rinse out food containers or household products before throwing them away. We don’t use up that last bit of ketchup, peanut butter, or shampoo because there’s always more available at a store somewhere.
"Bad Boys II," a Michael Bay filmSo, I believe that society’s wasteful habits stem from the expectation that there’s always somebody else who will take care of the environment, as it relates to our quality of life. The sanitation company will be there to pick up our mountains of trash and take it far away to a distant land somewhere so we don’t have to deal with it.
Companies in the private and public sectors will clean our streets and sidewalks after we soil them with muddy shoes in the rain, cigarette butts, empty pizza boxes, used condoms, baby diapers, sewage and other toxic agents. The utility companies will make sure we have everything we need to live and work as comfortably as possible. The local and/or federal governments will also take care of many other things that we don’t have to deal with as our society abuses the environment, maintains a sense of entitlement in having someone else rinse it out, and then repeats this mistreatment.
S is for SocietyThere is a scene in Michael Bay’s crime action movie “Bad Boys II” where a drug lord named Johnny Tapia tells his young daughter that fashion models are filthy creatures. Given that the western world takes its natural resources for granted, essentially biting the hand that feeds us, I would argue that we are all causes of a polluted environment in which we live and raise our children. However, sooner or later, something is gonna have to give on this front.
The importance of making conscious and better decisions on how we treat the earth is bigger than making it so that someone under the weather can sit on the sidewalk without having to worry about becoming even more ill. It’s about making it so that if we’re ever in a situation where we our dependency on environmental elements for some form of support is greater than ever – be that in terms of nourishment or physical support -- it will be in a much better condition, and thus a much better position to aid us in making that happen.
*Today’s blog post is in honor of EARTH DAY.
If YOU ruled the world, what law would you put into effect to combat pollution?
What are some of the grossest things YOU’VE noticed laying in the street?