OUR COCOON HOME, PLANET EARTH

Every gallon of gasoline weighs six pounds. 90% of that gallon is carbon, all of it used in the combustion process. Since an oxygen molecule weighs 1.33 times as much as a carbon molecule, that means each five pounds of carbon in a gallon of gasoline is combined with fourteen pounds of oxygen, to produce 19 pounds of carbon dioxide, for every gallon of gas burned in your car. Since the average vehicle in the United States gets 22 miles per gallon, and travels 11,000 miles during the year, that means that each of us, as we travel about our business in our cars each year, is putting over 10,000 pounds , or about 4.6 metric tons, of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere of our planet.

Each of us contributes significantly to global warming.

I don’t like that.

I don’t like that our forests, those factories that absorb our carbon dioxide, and produce oxygen for us to breath, are being slashed, burned, and eliminated. I don’t like that sections of our great lakes are now filled with toxic algae blooms, which make that water poisonous for humans. I don’t like that some of our children have high lead levels in their brains, dragging down their intelligence and ability to cope for their entire future life.  I don’t like that there are large fish kills in our rivers, coming from the toxic chemicals discharged from our mines or manufacturing plants. I don’t like that the larger fish in our oceans are now poisoned, carrying high levels of toxic heavy metals. I don’t like that our oceans have become massive garbage dumps for plastic trash.

I also don’t like that we are so primitive, as human animals, that many of our actions are based on fear and greed, rather than respect for each other. I don’t like that we use religious ideologies as false excuses, to then express  this fear and greed in wars all over the globe, which kill millions of citizens, displace millions of citizens from their homes, lead to destruction of infrastructure, resources, and habitat. The result? Our planet is rapidly becoming polluted and consumed to the point it will soon no longer sustain us.

Now there are many members of our society who say that all of this pollution and destruction of our resources is okay. When this planet becomes unlivable, they say, all we have to do is establish human life on some other planet or moon. I believe that those who carry this attitude are insane. They do not understand that we live in a cocoon, on a planet which is unique in the universe. We have so far found no planet exactly like ours, providing an environment which allows our form of life to survive. This planet has a rotating molten iron core, which produces an electromagnetic shield around us. That magnetic shield protects us from the searing radiation blasts of a constant massive nuclear bomb, going off 93 million miles away. That electromagnetic shield keeps us from being reduced to dust from that nuclear blast, while at the same time allowing enough energy to filter through it to sustain life. Our planet is just the right distance away from that constant nuclear bomb, protected by our shield of just the right strength, that we can maintain a blanket of atmosphere around our planet, allowing us to breathe oxygen, use oxygen to produce energy with our own internal combustion processes, and survive. Our planet is just the right distance away from that nuclear blast, protected by our shield, to have water, which is necessary for life.

We have, in other words, only one home where we can survive: planet earth. Although it is likely that there is life in many other places in the universe, none of it, as far as we know, is going to be under the same circumstances that we have on planet earth. Whatever life exists elsewhere, it is going to be far different than this form of life, which has evolved on this particular single planet, unique to us.

While I cannot, as an individual, force others to give up religious mythologies as an excuse to kill, and cannot force all other humans to use our resources wisely, I can at least, do two things. For one, I can express myself. I wrote to then president George W. Bush, when he announced plans to invade Iraq. I told him that this would be a monstrous mistake, causing inexcusable destruction of life and resources. He wrote me back, stating that he was right and I was wrong. I still maintain that I was right and he was wrong. I can write books and blogs on morals, ethics and religions. These books and blogs have been written to elucidate the highly rational reasons why we should treat each other with respect, rather than hatred and bigotry. They have been written in an attempt to clarify, as best I can, the highly rational reasons why we must stop using religious mythologies as excuses to commit violence against each other. I have tried my best to make the point that we are all in this together, on one home, planet earth, and must work together to survive.

The other thing I can do is to orient my life to conserve whatever resources I can on our only planet home, and pollute the least I can. That is why, in my home, all saran wrap and plastic bags get washed, dried, and reused over and over again, 100 times, and when they are no longer useable, placed in the plastic recycling bin. All other items that can be recycled go in their appropriate bins for plastic bags, heavy plastic, newspaper, cardboard, metal and glass. There is an attic fan in my house which is used for in between days. My windows are double pane with storm covers.  There is a 30 panel solar unit on my roof, attached to an electric meter which can go forward or backward. My solar panels produce that electricity which drives the geothermal unit in my basement. That unit is attached to 750 feet of buried pipe in my back yard, circulating water with antifreeze, providing a much more efficient heating and cooling unit than any other system. That geothermal unit has a hot water boost which goes to my electric hot water tank, reducing the cost of running that unit. There is a 240 volt line running from my control panel out to the garage. I use that 240 volt line to recharge my plug-in hybrid car, twice a week, for two hours at a time. That car, which I have had for almost two years, now, has averaged 132 MPG over that period of time.

Now, I don’t do the environmentally conscious things I do because they save me money. They don’t. By the time you count the cost of solar panels, conversion unit, geothermal unit, hybrid plug-in car, attic fan, double pane windows with storm covers, over the life span of those items, as opposed to the several  hundred dollars in utility costs I save per month, it still costs me more than it saves. I do what I do with my resources because I have children. I want the children of my children to have a home, the only home they will ever have, planet earth, which is a decent place to live, not a trash heap where they have to scavenge in order to survive. That is why I do what I do with our resources. That is why I think each of you should do what I do with your resources, within your means, so your children’s children will have a decent place to live, on the only land they will ever have, planet earth.

We cannot blame anyone else. We are the problem; and we have to fix it.

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