Environmental Radical
Hey folks! “O’er the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go!” Did I get you into the holiday spirit? I had to try, and that’s the only Thanksgiving tune I know. I’m writing this during the holiday season and I’m sure happy. I got hit in the head by a boomerang the day before Thanksgiving as a small lad. Ain’t been right since. That explains a lot of things.
You guys don’t know I have a daughter. In fact, I have grandkids. Call this column a Christmas gift to them. Might be my last. One doc says it is. What can I give them but a future?
This is truly from the heart as well as my brain. I’ve been working on this for a while. Out of all the dozens of agencies that want to save the world, I come up with three outfits that receive my backing. The first one is kind of difficult, but I choose Greenpeace, ’cause I figure first comes the action.
You folks probably heard of Greenpeace lately. I been following them for three decades. They got a history, and it hasn’t been sitting in a boardroom discussing ideas for solutions. Oh, they been doing some thinking, but Actionshould be their middle name. If you have doubts, go check out Greenpeace and the whales, but don’t stop there. The first action they are noted for is helping to stop nuclear testing off the island of Amchitka, Alaska.
Know how they do things like that? They get in the way. Tell me they ain’t got the balls to accomplish what we first need accomplished. There’s a lot more. They were in on the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement in Canada. They were in on creating the largest marine protection area on the planet, the Ross Sea, off the coast of Antarctica. They shut down the huge Amazon Basin for oil drilling. You probably already looked in the computer and you know that Greenpeace is being sued for $300 million by big-time oil companies. The head of Greenpeace says they done nothin’ to have to pay that and I much believe him. And showing they are multi-faceted, Greenpeace helped pressure food-service giants to commit to phasing out plastic straws and stirrers, prioritizing the reduction of single-use plastics.
You know plastics are our next enemy, and we’re the biggest plastic polluters in the world. As I’ve tried to tell Rep. Golden, who thinks we can’t transition from fossil fuels right now, plastic is a byproduct of oil and gas wells. The big problem with plastic is they don’t know how to recycle plastic, so they dispose of it. First they grind it up in little pieces — easier to plow it under some Third World economy. And if they can’t plow it under, they burn it. You ever been downwind of a burning pile of plastic? So what happens after it burns is the plastic turns into nanoplastics that float around our atmosphere til gravity has ’em hit the ground. Or get absorbed by people, breathed in by young’uns (the most susceptible), and here’s the damage — human organs start not working, especially brains, and lungs, of course. And they don’t just land in Third World countries.
I warned Rep. Golden about it but he didn’t listen. Keep an eye on the young’uns. Or maybe we’ll all have to wear a mask 7-24 to protect us from the atmosphere.
Before this year, I always donated to who needs it. St. Jude’s, Special Olympics, different hunger organizations to feed the little ones. Jesus, it hurt me having to give my dough to the battle with Trump for the planet and let a lot of young’uns go hungry. And to Make a Wish, people who wanted to give children a toy. I just discarded a Make a Wish asker. Boy did that hurt me deep down inside. I’ll just have to send a letter of explanation and pray they understand.
It’s the first year of this nonsense, because we got a president who doesn’t believe in climate changing. Who did you guys elect? Well, you got four years consternation. All of a sudden I can’t seem to find one person that admits to voting for him.
Sierra Club was real close to making the top three, but Grenpeace just seemed so much more worldly and we’re fighting for our whole planet. That’s why Earth Justice is also on my list, and NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). They have won some big cases under Biden. Trouble is, it’s not Biden we worry about. And there is no way to defeat Trump without a coalition of folks. The bad part is they are still fightin’ over Trump’s idiocies from the last time he was in office.
So now we got people getting ready. And let me say there’s only one way to defeat the puke brain ideas. We’ve got to get together. Like John Lennon said, “Come together, right now!”
