My Environmentalism Soapbox

Hey friends.

I try not to use my blog to soapbox, because having political agendas and liberal/conservative propaganda shoved down your throat is what your Facebook news feed is for. So I'm warning you, this post is about environmentalism, climate change, and proof that these threats are not abstract concepts you should be moderately concerned about in the way that you worry your diet coke's might give you cancer. It's real, I've seen it. I also don't have any solutions to the following problems, I just need to rant about them for a bit. Here goes...

Deforestation is big and scary.

The Azuero peninsula is a legit-for-reals victim of deforestation. A hundred years or so ago, it was as dense of a jungle as the Darien. Now, it reminds me of Nebraska, mid September. Brown, fields, and still ridiculously hot. It's too late for the Azuero, no really. It's all farmland. There's very little jungle left. But the Darien, now there is still a lot primary rainforest there...for now. In the dry season, bridges are built by logging companies to cross the rivers. The indigenous people are ok with it because they can't afford to build the bridges themselves and it makes life more convenient. Then the logging trucks come in and drive well up into the heart of their reservation and cut down trees that are at least my height in diameter, if not 2 of me. MASSIVE, hundred year old trees were chopped up, chained to flat bed trucks and hauled away where some outside logging company makes lots of money for them. It's sad, and the big trucks really do look like big evil monsters. Not to mention they go flying through the communities at speeds fast enough to squash kids like bugs. It hasn't happened yet, but its only a matter of time.

Waste. So much waste.

My 80 year old landlady yells at my roommate and I because we refuse to throw our organic trash away. Mostly, we don't want to throw our food scraps and eggshells in the trash because it will attract bugs. But its also because that organic stuff doesn't need to be encased in plastic and thrown into a landfill or burned. Give it a week in this tropical climate and its already compost. After 2 years of smelling grilled trash from my neighbor's burn piles, I am allergic to creating trash. Packaging makes me cringe. In Playona, the options were throw it in the river or light it on fire. GAH! Landfills don't work because it is a flood zone. I once saw a 2 year old sucking on an old, opened, half burned BATTERY. Then there was the time I found a 4 year old using a used condom as a balloon. TRASH IS A PROBLEM. Moving to the other side of the country has only proved that no where in Panama has figured out what to do with it. Ugh. My only solution thus far has been to create as little trash as possible.

In the US, we have a convenient barrier. A person never has to contemplate, do I contaminate the river or the air today? because of trash pickup and the existence of landfills. While this is great and reduces littering, it is also a big enabler. It enables us to guiltlessly create so much more trash than any other country.

Climate Change is for real and serious.

I was visiting an agriculture PCV the other day and told me about a conversation he had with one of his neighbors. He lives in the indigenous reservation of the Ngabe-Bugle, the largest indigenous group in Panama who live and farm in the mountains. They have little access to the outside world and typically get through 6th grade in education. The farmer told this Ag Volunteer about how serious climate change was, and was asking what he could do to stop it. His trees (I forget which fruit) that used to bloom in March, now bloom in October.

I don't know the science behind all of that so I can't prove the definite connection between climate change and this farmer's crops, but his story is not unique. If you tell a rural farmer here about climate change, their response is, 'Well, yea, we know. We see it happening.' Coming from a country where a large portion of the population either labels is as a conspiracy or doesn't understand its severity, that was shocking to me. I expected resistance, or at least some hesitation. Instead, telling them that climate change is happening is like saying the sun is in the sky. Well, yea, we know. We can see it right there!

In the US, I lived my life as if nature was one of my toys, one of my gadgets for entertainment. When I wanted to enjoy it, I went camping and hiking and swimming. The rest of the time, I lived in a bubble to keep it out, to prevent it from intervening or interacting with what I was doing. Caring for it meant at most cutting the grass and raking the leaves. Separating my plastic bottles from the rest of the trash was gold star worthy.

In Panama, nature dictates my life. The river determined whether or not you could travel, fish, or do laundry. Rain determined whether or not you could work, whether or not you had water to drink. The sun forced you to take breaks and dusk sent you home. I respect it a lot more now that I ever have before, because I can see the firsthand the effects my life and the lives of those around me are having on it. In the US, cities create concrete walls between the humans and nature so they can't see the affect they are having. But just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there.

I don't have the solution to environmental conservation, so I can't say "Follow these 3 easy steps and the world will magically be all better". I just...needed to get that out there. Play nice with this earth friends, she's the only one we've got!

If you want more concrete examples of how to play nice, here's 50 ways to start...

http://www.50waystohelp.com/





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