Being Green

When I was a kid, "being green" meant something totally different than it does today. I don’t remember even having “Earth Day” on the calendar. Perhaps it was there and I was just clueless. When I was in college, I think that was the time when I realized people were planting trees on “Earth Day” in Indiana. Yet there seemed to be the skeptics and the greenies and those unaware or at least that was how I viewed it. I had grown up with a family compost pile, planting trees because we wanted to, sometimes being charged a nickel for leaving my bedroom lights on, and when we went camping or out for a picnic always cleaning up after ourselves. Choosing to think about the environment was just part of our lifestyle not a political platform.

For today’s youth generation, things are very different. “Earth Day” seems to be getting more and more personal and political policies are being reformed because of what it stands for. There are far more articles written and much more “in our faces” evidence of the effects of all types of pollution and shortages of natural resources around the world. In our school, here in Chiang Mai, environmentally sensitive issues seem to be woven into much of the curriculum throughout the school year...perhaps because the damage is at our doorstep.

Our family has lived in countries where we have witnessed both the pollution and the shortage – not just from a rising price perspective – but from overuse…and our older kids are beginning to “get the picture”. Yet, our views, their views and many others’ too, are still very narrow for what is actually being used and abused here on God’s green Earth.

Faith recently had to write a fictional piece about life with the last bit of water for one of her classes. After having just returned from Australia, the reality of a water shortage was very fresh in her mind and provided a good springboard for her fictional piece...entitled...

4K Water Restrictions by Faith Cougill

I love gardening. Before the water restrictions became so high, I had a beautiful garden, a veggie patch, and a couple of fruit trees out back behind my house. It was my little haven, and if I may be so bold, I reckon that it was the best and most diverse garden in the whole neighbourhood. I grew strawberries, green beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and I had two apple trees! My husband loves gardening too, and he helped me with everything. He helped me pick out different kinds of seeds, and he persevered with me through the whole planting and growing process. We were a team! But now that we have 4K water restrictions, we can’t even take a shower every day, let alone, keep and tend a garden! Everyone’s grass is dried up (in other words, there is no grass), we can only take showers once every other day for 5 minutes, all the crop foods are more that double their normal prices because the farmers are not allowed to use irrigation, bottled water is now twice as expensive as it used to be…the list just goes on and on! Now I realize that you might think that I am pouting and complaining, and that because I don’t have my garden anymore that I am now depressed and irritable, but you are wrong, my friend. I reckon that it is actually a blessing to have water restrictions as a result of the miniscule amount of rain that we receive. These water restrictions force Australians to think about how much water they are actually using, and how little water they really need to survive, compared to the habitual, desired amount. It places the responsibility on us, as a people, to consider the environment, and to be reminded that organisms other than ourselves might need the water too.

Check out these recent related articles.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6620919.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6610000/newsid_6617800/6617847.stm?bw=nb&mp=wm#